Will you cancel Netflix if they stop Password Sharing?

[choddo]

20 hours ago, Minion said:

So this was posted on reddit, wow, just wow!

 

https://thestreamable.com/news/confirmed-netflix-unveils-first-details-of-new-anti-password-sharing-measures#can-you-still-share-netflix-with-someone-who-doesnt-live-with-you

 

If you don't want to follow the link here is the detail:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Who Can Use a Netflix Account Now?

Netflix accounts are still shareable, but only within one household. To ensure that your devices are associated with your primary location, Netflix is now asking users to connect to the Wi-Fi at your primary location, open the Netflix app or website, and watch something at least once every 31 days.

Can You Still Share Netflix With Someone Who Doesn’t Live With You?

No, accounts are only meant to be used within one household. Netflix will prompt users who try to sign into your account elsewhere to sign up for their own account instead and block their access until they do.

Netflix will NOT begin automatically charging account holders whose information is used outside of their homes.

Can Other Users on Your Netflix Account Save Their Profiles?

Yes, Netflix offers users a profile transfer feature that will allow them to migrate their show recommendations, watch history, and more to their own account if they decide to create one. This will give password sharers the opportunity to preserve their profile if they sign up for their own Netflix accounts.

Can You Still Use Netflix While Traveling?

Signing into Netflix outside of your home may lead to the device in use being blocked from Netflix. This could prevent you from signing into new devices while traveling, but Netflix has devised a workaround.

Traveling users who want to use Netflix on a hotel smart TV, company laptop, etc. can request a temporary code from the service when signing in. This will give them access to their account for seven consecutive days.

How Can You Prevent Netflix from Blocking Your Devices?

Signing into home Wi-Fi at least once every 31 days on your devices will make them “trusted devices,” which Netflix will remember and leave unblocked.

If your device has been blocked incorrectly, you’ll need to contact Netflix in order to get it unblocked.

How Will Netflix Know if You’re Not in Your Home/Primary Location?

Netflix uses information such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to determine whether a device signed into your account is connected at your primary location.

If your device is being used outside your home by someone you haven’t authorized, you can sign into your account and sign out on all other devices, then change your password.

 

 

So if I run a VPN at home and get the lad to hook up to that once a month, we're all good?

 

11 minutes ago, davidcotton said:

So my primary use of Netflix is at home on my iPad.  My mum occasionally uses it on her tv under my account as one of the profiles (paid for).  Am I going to be affected by these changes?

 

Do you live in the same house? Then no.

 

Anyway it seems those rules aren't the rules

https://thestreamable.com/news/netflix-claims-it-errantly-posted-password-sharing-rules-that-would-block-devices-outside-of-subscribers-homes

 

5 hours ago, JohnC said:

Can you download to a device and play from that?

 

Yes

[Majora]

28 minutes ago, choddo said:

 

No they are definitely going to do it. Competition in this market is about content as much as price and they have to fix that too as it's tepid at best. Apple are making inroads. Prime is mostly shite. Disney is ... repetitive?

 

Netflix absolutely kill the competition when it comes to most streamed shows every year though. It isn't even close. It may not necessarily be shows this forum would champion due to demographic but Netflix do seem able to create shows which hit the zeitgeist HARD more frequently than any other provider. 

 

I'm not at all convinced by arguments that Netflix are going to get dropped like a hot potato because of their password changes.

 

 

 

 

 

[ZOK]

I feel like I watch Netflix all the time, and the only shows of theirs I’ve seen on that list are Dahmer, Seinfeld and the first two Stranger Things series.

[choddo]

3 minutes ago, ZOK said:

I feel like I watch Netflix all the time, and the only shows of theirs I’ve seen on that list are Dahmer, Seinfeld and the first two Stranger Things series.

You haven't watched Ozark?

 

wtf dude?

[Minion]

Or Cobra Kai?

[ZOK]

1 minute ago, choddo said:

You haven't watched Ozark?

 

wtf dude?

I can’t watch a show where Michael from Arrested Development pretends to be someone else.

[ZOK]

1 minute ago, Minion said:

Or Cobra Kai?

No interest.

[Alex W.]

58 minutes ago, choddo said:

 

No they are definitely going to do it. Competition in this market is about content as much as price and they have to fix that too as it's tepid at best. Apple are making inroads. Prime is mostly shite. Disney is ... repetitive?

They’ve also been pretty open that they think they’ve hit the maximum possible audience size and the only way to continue growth* is to extract more money from each user by increasing prices, adding tiers, and - yes - reducing the number of users per subscription.
 

*Isn’t capitalism great? As soon as any product stops increasing in revenue it will die.

[choddo]

1 minute ago, Alex W. said:

They’ve also been pretty open that they think they’ve hit the maximum possible audience size and the only way to continue growth* is to extract more money from each user by increasing prices, adding tiers, and - yes - reducing the number of users per subscription.
 

*Isn’t capitalism great? As soon as any product stops increasing in revenue it will die.

 

Profit  more than revenue. But yeah, it's awesome.

[JPickford]

I'm cancelling if this kicks in.  As far as I'm concerned I'm paying for 4 simultaneous streams and location is irrelevant.   My daughter leaving home and using my account is not piracy.   They can stuff it.

[Darren]

Yep, I've got one (adult) child who's moved out and two away at uni, all on our account. Students aren't going to pay for their own accounts and I'm not paying for it if they can't use it!

[Thor]

2 hours ago, ZOK said:

I can’t watch a show where Michael from Arrested Development pretends to be someone else.

Ha! This is exactly why I haven't started watching it. 

[mikeyl]

I have a bunch of freeloaders all over my Netflix and Disney, so all for some restrictions please! Been wanting to cancel Netflix for ages, mostly because of Chapelle and Gervais, last thing I watched was Better Call Saul but too many people are relying on me.

[Darren]

3 hours ago, ZOK said:

I can’t watch a show where Michael from Arrested Development pretends to be someone else.

 

31 minutes ago, Thor said:

Ha! This is exactly why I haven't started watching it. 

 

Ozark works quite well if you imagine it as the sequel to Arrested Development, where Michael takes on a new identity and puts into practice everything he learned from the banana stand etc.

[Hitcher]

Quote

To ensure that your devices are associated with your primary location, Netflix is now asking users to connect to the Wi-Fi at your primary location, open the Netflix app or website, and watch something at least once every 31 days.

Both my son and me use ethernet connections to watch Netflix though not Wi-Fi!

[thesnwmn]

16 minutes ago, Hitcher said:

Both my son and me use ethernet connections to watch Netflix though not Wi-Fi!

 

I suspect this will be fine. I think it's just geo-locating your network connection.

 

My usage will be unchanged. I use my Netflix account on fixed devices at home for the most part.

 

Occasionally I travel and would use my phone or tablet. This could catch me out if I don't launch Netflix on them before leaving home to make sure they're registered as having used it at home. But this is so rare and if it doesn't work then I'll go and do something else.

[gospvg]

My son is at university so I expect his account may get blocked at some point, everyone else should be fine they generally use it from home with the occasional download while travelling.

[Alex W.]

Exciting new developments on the way:

 

[footle]

6 hours ago, gospvg said:

My son is at university so I expect his account may get blocked at some point, everyone else should be fine they generally use it from home with the occasional download while travelling.

set a home vpn up?

(admittedly this may quickly get more complicated - depending on your router and isp - than just paying for two Netflix accounts)

[gospvg]

51 minutes ago, footle said:

set a home vpn up?

(admittedly this may quickly get more complicated - depending on your router and isp - than just paying for two Netflix accounts)

 

With the base account we have now you can only watch on 1 device at anytime. So more than likely my son will just not bother and watch Youtube instead.

[mushashi]

On 01/02/2023 at 15:49, X_2_0 said:

Blocking devices and having to contact Netflix to unblock them doesn’t seem a great way to grow their service. I’m sure plenty of people will just cancel in frustration. 

 

They are doing this precisely because their service has stopped growing fast organically and their data shows that a shitload of existing customers are sharing their accounts with other people so the only way to get significantly more money/subscribers now is to raise prices or force people getting it for cheap/free via account sharing to pay up or fuck off.

 

Their guess is more will pay up than fuck off.

[mushashi]

Some context for why Netflix thinks this is warranted.

 

They have ~230 Million paying subscribers at present and out of those, ~100 Million are account sharing so the potential subscriber base increase is pretty large, worth pissing off the vocal minority as revenue is now their preferred performance metric of choice.

[X_2_0]

2 hours ago, mushashi said:

 

They are doing this precisely because their service has stopped growing fast organically and their data shows that a shitload of existing customers are sharing their accounts with other people so the only way to get significantly more money/subscribers now is to raise prices or force people getting it for cheap/free via account sharing to pay up or fuck off.

 

Their guess is more will pay up than fuck off.

Between this, cancelling every other series within months of launching iand having at least 2 viable Netflix alternatives available these days, I guess we will just have to wait and see.

[JohnC]

Apparently the thing about verifying devices on your home network once a month is not part of the plan.

[Alex W.]

Actually it is the plan, for the countries where the sharing block has gone in to effect, according to Netflix. It just wasn’t meant to be listed on other countries’ support pages:

 

Quote

For a brief time yesterday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries. We have since updated it.

Netflix haven’t said either way whether this will be the behaviour when the system rolls out more broadly, although given that the other countries are acting as a trial it’s entirely possible things will change.

[Mike1812]

How do they know your home network? Can they get location data from it? Or could I just set my phone hot spot to the same SSID to fool it?

[elyuw]

I still don’t get why sharing passwords is the issue. The account you have has a number of concurrent streams allowed, I pay for 4 concurrent streams (with the 4K HDR package, whatever it’s called today). Surely it’s those that matter, not who is using them or where they are.

 

I wish I could pay less and only have 2, one for me and one for the other half. I’ve never shared my password either. 

[Alex W.]

14 minutes ago, Mike1812 said:

How do they know your home network? Can they get location data from it? Or could I just set my phone hot spot to the same SSID to fool it?

IP address and/or the hotspot hardware address probably.
 

Will depend on the OS, I know iOS has become very strict on letting apps access any data that can be used to infer user location without consent, but even there the IP address would be available. And if another (Android, Windows, smart TV) device on the same IP address is sharing the known hardware address with Netflix, it’d be easy for them to update in response to IP address changes.

 

Edit - If they’re willing to be more nefarious, pretty much the entire personalised ads industry is based on tracking user locations in near-real time without explicitly having to ask for the device’s location.

[ZOK]

50 minutes ago, elyuw said:

I still don’t get why sharing passwords is the issue. The account you have has a number of concurrent streams allowed, I pay for 4 concurrent streams (with the 4K HDR package, whatever it’s called today). Surely it’s those that matter, not who is using them or where they are.

 

I wish I could pay less and only have 2, one for me and one for the other half. I’ve never shared my password either. 

Because they want to make more money, that’s why it matters. No-one is going to buy separate Netflix accounts to use in the same home. But if different homes can’t use the same accounts they may well do, and Netflix clearly thinks that they will.

[elyuw]

30 minutes ago, ZOK said:

Because they want to make more money, that’s why it matters. No-one is going to buy separate Netflix accounts to use in the same home. But if different homes can’t use the same accounts they may well do, and Netflix clearly thinks that they will.

Ah yes good point. I was looking at purely from a logistics perspecitve. If they want to make money they should stop making so much rubbish would be my suggestion, but I realise that's not how they are thinking.