Now Netflix also wants to prevent the sharing of accounts in Austria. Additional costs apply for users who do not live together. What does that mean specifically?
Netflix is apparently serious: the streaming service wants to restrict the sharing of accounts in over a hundred countries in the future. Also in Austria and Germany. Netflix has long overlooked the fact that friends, family members or even strangers who don’t live in the same house share an account and the associated costs. Now it should be stopped. From when and how exactly was left open.
Why, however, is no secret: The company assumes that around 100 million households watch Netflix with “borrowed” login data (with 232 million paying customers). There are even platforms for stranger account sharing. The many Netflix subscription communities have not always been a thorn in the side of the service. In 2016, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explained at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that account sharing is “a positive thing”: “We love it when people share Netflix, whether it’s two people on the couch sit or in ten”. The fact that, for example, children who have already moved out can also use their parents’ accounts was not a problem for the company at the time. “Love is sharing a password,” Netflix officially tweeted back in 2017. The streaming boom was still in full swing, the services were spending wildly on expensive productions without having to think too much about profitability. Meanwhile, not only Netflix is under pressure on the markets.
One main network per account
For customers, this now means that anyone who does not live in the same household should not be able to access a shared account. Netflix does not disclose exactly how this is to be technically controlled: A combination of “IP addresses, device IDs and account activities” is evaluated. GPS data would not be collected.