Netflix cracks down on friends sharing passwords

Shows like Emily in Paris and The Crown are popular on Netflix

Netflix is cracking down on password borrowing with a pop-up warning for people who log in outside an account holder’s household. 

The streaming giant is testing the alerts, which appear when someone logs into an account outside of the registered address, the company confirmed on Thursday.

One user, who shared an image of the pop-up on Twitter, likened the update to a "purge".

The move signals a change of heart for the streaming giant, which has never before enforced a ban on account sharing. 

It stopped shy of enforcing individual accounts in 2013 when account sharing became popular, instead introducing a feature that allowed up to five people to create their own personal profile.

Netflix said this helped give each viewer different recommendations based on the films they watched. 

O no. Netflix doing the purge?!? pic.twitter.com/XXlHtfgfsy

— chante most (@DOP3Sweet) March 9, 2021

The warnings are being tested on a small number of customers, and it is not clear whether this will become a regular feature. 

A Netflix spokesman said: “This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorised to do so.” 

Stolen Netflix passwords have become lucrative for hackers who sell them for pennies on the black market. Credentials are often stolen through email phishing schemes where a victim is fooled into thinking they are logging their email and password into a legitimate Netflix account. 

Netflix crossed a 200m subscriber milestone in January, following a year in which households across the world signed up as restrictions were put in place to stop the spread of Covid-19. 

Total subscribers had climbed to 203.7m at the end of 2020, meaning that 37m had signed up in the year.