Netflix Introduces New Rules Charging Additional Fees For Illicit Account Sharing

Streaming giant Netflix will be soon launching a test, that would let primary Netflix account holders pay an additional fee. This fee will be for users outside their own households — which comes as a new attempt by the streaming company to take care of illicit password-sharing – an extremely common practice when it comes to OTT platforms.

Netflix To Bring Some Major Changes!

If we go by the Netflix terms of service, an account of a customer “may not be shared with individuals beyond your very own household.” However, post a lot of years of ignoring the password-sharing behavior that comes outside that very requirement, the leading streaming company ran a limited test that prompted users to enter the credentials of their accounts in order to nudge the unwanted freeloaders into actually paying for their own accounts. This took place last year.

Test To Be Held In 3 Countries!

Now, Netflix is coming up with more test launching in three countries — Costa Rica, Chile, and Peru — Netflix will be allowing members/users who share their account credentials with those users who are outside their household and to do so “securely and easily, while also paying slightly more,” as per Chengyi Long, the director of product innovation at Netflix. The new options are going to be rolled out in the upcoming weeks in the above three countries (and for now, these may or may not expand beyond these markets).

“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans,” Long wrote in a blog post about the test. “While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”

Now, including this “add an extra member” feature, users with Netflix’s Premium and Standard plans will be easily able to add more subsidiary accounts on Netflix for up to a maximum of two people that they don’t live with, and each will have their own profile, log in and password and also, some personalized recommendations, — and all of this, for less than the overall cost of a separate Netflix plan.

In the countries which will be undergoing the test, the total cost for adding a sub-member is a total of 2380 CLP in Chile, while it’s around $2.99 USD in Costa Rica and about 7.9 PEN in the land of Peru.

As with other tests, the streamer has conducted, there’s no guarantee that the option to pay for non-household members will end up a permanent part of the service. “We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world,” Long wrote in the post.

Apart from this, Netflix is also testing out the ability to let its users transfer their profiles to new accounts – something that would make it a lot easier for password moochers to actually pay for their own plans.

The Netflix members in these above three test countries can also allow people who share their Netflix account to transfer the profile information, either to an extra member or a new account or an extra sub-account — even preserving their viewing history – giving more leverage to privacy, My List and the info on personalized recommendations.

In these three test markets, Netflix will notify members over the next few weeks who go on sharing their accounts outside of their household about the new options. A member might feel prompted to verify their account, only if a device that’s outside their household logs in to the Netflix account; the streaming platform may also ask the user to verify from the device by sending a verification code – a step followed by many apps to maintain safety and privacy.

Netflix ended the last year, ie. 2021 with a whopping 221.8 million total paying users across the globe. Out of these, 75.2 million (which is about 34% of the total) were in Canada and the U.S.

Here’s a breakdown of the pricing of Netflix’s plans in each country:

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