Perhaps they are just trying to bluff everyone in this country into complying.

Thanks for sharing that because I was wondering if I would have to change my membership in some way to handle two locations.

We just discontinued our Netflix account yesterday due to the sharing issue . We live in Ontario, Canada. We pay $23.95 and had our daughters on the account with us. We have found that there really isn’t much on Netflix that we need to watch. My daughter told me that the other paid subscriptions are just waiting to see how Netflix fares and then they may follow .

I read an article about that yesterday - that they 'accidently' put the info about sharing into the US help pages and have no intention of rolling it out here UNTIL they have given US subscribers notice. Sure, it was an accident. How do you put your customers on notice without telling them you are putting them on notice? That's how. The day they charge me for sharing is the day I cancel. We share our Verizon account among households in 3 states and our Amazon. Netflix is playing a risky game in the US I think but we'll see.

Maybe they are looking at Canada as the test market.

We have two houses and a camper, all with an Apple TV with Netflix. So we are supposed to pay for 3 subscriptions? Makes no sense!

Many Airbnbs and other vacation rental properties have smart TVs that you can log on with your own account, so this idea of limiting an account to a single physical address is a bad idea.

My former daughter-in-law shares her account with me so I could access things for my grandson to watch when he's at my house. I look at it once in a while, he never does now that he's older. I figured I'd just take my laptop to her house once a month and sign onto her account when there, but I can see how problematic this would be for those of you with two homes or even those who travel and access from AirBNBs.

Last night when I went to log-in to YouTubeTV the app asked me if I was visiting or lived at the location. We are at our desert house so I chose visiting as we are at our other home more often. Wondering how this is going to play out. Not paying for two subscriptions to the same service that is for sure.

And what about kids in college that are still part of the household and dependents, but away at college in another city/state. They have to offer a way for people to add these family situations to their accounts. Not paying for extra subscriptions either!

My understanding is that they won't roll it out in the US until March or perhaps April so posting the "instructions" were premature and possibly won't be how it is verified in the US.

I am sure they will have a way to verify devices as well as actual ISP data. Someone who has the relevant sign in information would be able to verify.

There is a way to verify a new device or sign in but that person would need access to the account. I think a lot of people are willing to share their passwords with people with whom they wouldn't share their account information.

It sounded to me like you would be required to sign on with any device using Netflix at least once a month from your home internet provider - requiring you to be onsite. But maybe I have it wrong.

@Olychick My understanding is that you would also be sent a verification code to the email that is registered that you have to confirm.

I assume there will be a way to differentiate between actual household members like children living in a dorm and people who are giving access to unrelated large groups of friends or extended family which are not a household by any definition. People would probably give necessary access to personal account information to children but not to their neighbor or casual friend. Roommates would be a household becaise they would all be using the same WiFi

Well, that will be an interesting system if they try to implement it. Kids signing onto Netflix while the parents are at work with no access to their personal emails (jobs where they cannot monitor personal emails all day) or parents who are in bed, but the teens are up late, etc. Or college kids across the country in a different time zone.

I can't believe Netflix is being bled dry by sharing...but I'm pretty much not sympathetic to corporations of that size making less $.

As someone who doesn't abuse sharing my password, I do think that end users have a vested interest in Netflix attempting to limit password sharing to households.

Someone is going to have to pay ultimately so why should my rates be subsidized for free loaders? If revenues are increased by not providing free access to people who aren't legitimately household members, then the price for my subscription would be lower since I am not subsidizing others.

I would imagine that anyone who is legimitately a member of the household will have a mechanism for continuing the service - as I wrote an easy fix would be to enable very trusted members of the household to have access to verification.

@Helen when people are paying extra for multiple screens, I fail to see how that is abuse. Netflix already set limits for the basic service and charges extra for people to be able to run multiple screens simultaneously. This location lockdown may work out for them, or more likely, a lot of people will be dropping their service when it is no longer worth the money.

@Helen, having to use some sort of verification or periodic sign-on would be a problem for some of the elderly. My mother, who is in the early stages of dementia, relies on Netflix daily for entertainment. She would not be able to deal with a verification process or having to sign on all the time or even periodically. I certainly don't want to give her credentials to a care giver to sign on for her.

I do not believe for one second that our rates will be lowered if there was no sharing. The corporation would make more profit without lowering rates. That is how most business' works.

I seem to have struck a cord.

In the countries in which the password restriction has been introduced, there is an option to add someone to the plan for a relatively low price - $3.00 or so.

I don't think rates are lowered but corporations are in the business of making money. Costs have increased especially in terms of programming with increased competition for talent. While I don't think prices will be lowered, I do think that Netflix and other companies are attempting to increase revenue since there are a signficant percentage of their current users who don't share passwords outside of their household and any "restrictions" wouldn't be an issue for them OR who would pay $3 or some other insignificant fund because they have unusual circumstances with a person who is not 'legally" in their household like a mother with Alzheimer.

Since I don't share my password along with a significant number of people who don't I would prefer Netflix increase their revenue by charging more to people who are paying less per user. I am paying a higher cost PER USER than someone who is sharing the password with multiple users who are not in their household as legally defined.

I believe that Netflix already charges for more then one TV to be using their service at a time. I had 2 TV's on my plan until my husband passed away last year. When I dropped it to to 1 TV my rate went down. What they are doing now just seems like greed to me. And no, there are no others using my password on Netflix. I certainly can see how this would create problems for those customers with children away at college or those with more then one home.

Many of us have switched from cable providers to streaming services to have more flexibility exactly because they aren't tethered to a single physical location. As @girlnamedgalez8a mentioned, Netflix already charges extra fees for additional screens and most people that have an account used at multiple locations pay this fee. Additionally, there are many people who choose a streaming service so that they can access the service outside of their physical home when they travel for work or on vacation.

So @Helen you do strike a cord calling this use "abuse" because people are already paying extra for this service. Should I be mad that I have to pay more per person at a gym or a ski resort that sells a family pass when I like to use the service alone? Should I be upset when I see someone using the carpool lane with their 8 year old in the car because that 8 year old is not a legal driver and is not actually removing any traffic from the road? Netflix is making this change because their users are stabilzing rather than continually growing, and that's what shareholders want to see: continued year over year profit growth. This is not about fairness or any kind of improvements or cost reduction for the customers paying for Netflix.

I was not aware that Netflix has a lower price for users that only use one screen.

In the USA, the price for one screen is $9.95 approximately. This plan even works if you have multiple people in your home because not everyone needs to watch netflix separately at the same time. 🤷‍♀️😂 You don’t get 4k i think but for most people I doubt that is an issue for watching on a smart television or ipad since it is a small screen even with the best television.

The policy has always been that screens are to be shared by households and the new policy doesn’t impact that many people since most shared accounts live together at least based on articles I have read.

Ofcourse it is about revenue as netflix isn’t a charity. My point is that for many Netflix subscribers - the majority from what I have read - it has no impact and in fact is beneficial since it keeps their subscription fee the same and makes up the revenue from those people utilizing more screens 🤷‍♀️ People are complaining their rate might go up while other people are glad that this will probably cause their rates to not increase. Winners, losers and those for whim it makes no difference

I disagree that Netflix has always had a policy stating that the screens must be shared by a household. In fact, Netflix publicly stated that account/password sharing was acceptable and even promoted it.

In 2017:

In a March 10, 2017, Twitter thread that was promoting its original series Love, Netflix wrote, "Love is sharing a password." The single tweet in the thread garnered more than 15,000 likes and more than 4,600 retweets.

Password sharing has become a common practice among Netflix users, so much so that the company estimates more than 30 million households in the U.S. and Canada—and more than 100 million worldwide—engage in it, CNBC reported. But after the company said in its quarterly letter to shareholders Tuesday that it lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade, it warned that a crackdown on password sharing could be in the works.

https://www.newsweek.com/netflix-encouraged-subscribers-share-passwords-years-before-crackdown-1699473

In 2016:

In an under-the-radar announcement from last week’s CES – likely dwarfed by news of Netflix’s global expansion – Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that consumers sharing Netflix account information was “a positive thing.”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/11/netflix-ceo-says-account-sharing-is-ok/

The issue is that Netflix is no longer growing. Not that it isn't making a profit. It is. But they are reaching market saturation and are looking for ways to leverage further market growth. At the end of the day, Netflix is a for-profit publicly traded company with hungry shareholders and they can do whatever they want and introduce whatever rules they would like, including limiting how many locations may access a single account. What users have been doing does not equate to "abuse" or "misuse". But it also does not mean people will continue to pay for a service that they previously justified by sharing across multiple households. At the end of the day, the free market will have to decide if this change increases or decreases the number of Netflix subscribers.

@pricklypearcactus The netflix terms of service always limited sharing to members of your household but they chose to not enforce the terms of service until recently because their business projections weren't negatively impacted by password sharing among non household members. They have evidently determined that enforcing this will bring in enough revenue to counter act any loss by members who leave.

I doubt most people will end their subscription because they either don’t mind cutting off casuall friends or they are willing to pay the relatively low amount to add someone who doesn’t have the same ISP address or wifi network like a previous poster’s mother 🤷‍♀️

it is obviously a way to increase revenue in a manner their marketing people determined was least objectionable to the largest percentwge of their subscribers who wouldn’t be impacted. I don’t personally know anyone who will be impacted although obviously there are people who will be.

4.2. The Netflix service and any content accessed through our service are for your personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your household unless otherwise allowed by your subscription plan. During your Netflix membership, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access the Netflix service and Netflix content through the service. Except for the foregoing, no right, title or interest shall be transferred to you. You agree not to use the service for public performances.

I would consider people in my household to be those who live in my home at least part time, like children who are in college. Not my household are my grown children, my siblings, my parents, or anyone who has their own home.

I would tag everyone in this thread but, time. I follow this guy on Instagram and almost wet my pants watching this about Netflix. (the rest of his stuff is good, too but you have to go back a long way to get the gist)

https://www.instagram.com/p/CoX-MxKj3w2/

Here ya go…..