In a step towards the broader rollout of its password-sharing crackdown, the video-streaming giant on Thursday announced that it is rolling out the new policy on password-sharing in four more countries – Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain. This means users in these countries will need to pay additional money if they want to share their Netflix subscription account with people who do not live with them. For those unaware, Netflix had previously tested the password-sharing rules in select markets, including Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and elsewhere in Latin America. “We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account with features like profiles and multiple streams. While these have been hugely popular, they’ve also created confusion about when and how you can share Netflix. Today, over 100 million households are sharing accounts — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films,” Netflix announced in a news release. “So over the last year, we’ve been exploring different approaches to address this issue in Latin America, and we’re now ready to roll them out more broadly in the coming months, starting today in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain. Our focus has been on giving members greater control over who can access their account.” The crackdown on password sharing feature allows users to set primary location, which will help members set this up, ensuring that anyone who lives in their household can use their Netflix account. Further, subscribers can now easily manage who has access to their account from the new Manage Access and Devices page. Not only this, people using an account can now easily transfer a profile to a new account, which they pay for — keeping their personalized recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games, and more. For instance, you can now transfer your profile from a friend’s account to your own. The announcement also says that members can still easily watch Netflix on their personal devices or log into a new TV, like at a hotel or holiday rental, although it doesn’t provide much information on how it will be implemented. Only members on Standard or Premium plans can add additional accounts. This option is not available for members on the basic and basic with ads plans. Members on Netflix’s Standard plan can add an extra member sub-account for one person they don’t live with, while those on the Premium plan can add an extra member sub-account for up to two people. For instance, users can pay an extra CAD$7.99 a month per person in Canada, NZD$ 7.99 in New Zealand, Euro 3.99 in Portugal, and Euro 5.99 in Spain to add an additional member to their accounts. This additional price will provide each person with a profile, personalized recommendations, login, and password. The move to implement a crackdown on password-sharing is meant to help Netflix grow its number of paid subscribers, which reduced drastically last year due to increased subscription pricing, its exit from Russia due to the Russian-Ukraine war, and illegal password-sharing. In the first quarter of 2022, the streaming giant had lost over 200,000 of its subscribers globally, which was its first big loss in over a decade. During the period between April and July 2022, Netflix reported a further loss of nearly 1 million subscribers.
