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It’s tough to hear, but it may finally be time for you to get your own Netflix account.
If you never signed up for Netflix, chances are you’ve been using a friend’s or ex’s account for the better part of the last decade. It came in clutch because you never got to see that pesky $10 charge on your bank statement and even got your own profile, so your recommendations were on point.
Now, where you may have gone wrong is to pass that account password off to some else frivolously, and before you know it, there are way too many people on one account. Netflix has finally caught on, and the company is finally going to begin cracking down with a pop-up message that shows up when your fire up the app.
“If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching,” reads the message.
The new feature is being tested among a small and random sample of customers worldwide. They’re being asked to confirm they either are or live with the account holder and asked to login in. Once the proper credentials are entered, account holders are then sent a code, which the current user must enter to begin streaming.
As recently as 2016, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings thought that password sharing was just par for the course and not much could be done about it because often times it’s harmless, saying, “Because there’s so much legitimate password sharing — like you sharing with your spouse, with your kids … so there’s no bright line, and we’re doing fine as is.”
Netflix currently offers three monthly plans in the states– the basic one for $8.99, $13.99 to stream on two separate devices at the same time, and $17.99 to stream on four screens simultaneously.
