Netflix’s New Password Sharing Rules (and How to Get Around Them)
We knew that day was coming: Netflix wants you to stop sharing your account with friends and family , and would rather have those users pay for their account or not stream at all. You have probably heard about the company’s plans to crack down on this exchange and even said that it will charge you for each additional user. We now know how the company plans to roll out these changes in the US, and it’s a bit different than expected.
We don’t appear to have a firm timeline yet for when these policies will be officially put in place, but Netflix has updated its “Sharing Your Netflix Account” help center page to detail how the policy will work.
How Netflix plans to restrict password sharing
In short, the new Netflix policy is: “A Netflix account is for people who live together in the same house,” like something out of a bible verse. According to the Netflix Book, everyone who lives away from home needs their own account. This is a departure from the password-sharing model we’ve heard about so far, where Netflix will charge a certain amount for each user accessing an account outside of the household.
Netflix says it uses IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity from devices registered to your Netflix account to determine whether a device is streaming inside or outside the household. If you are an account holder or live in the same household as the account holder, you can stream and download Netflix at your leisure as long as you have enough screens on your particular plan. If you don’t, Netflix would like to remind you that it has several plans at different prices, such as their new Ad Tier plan .
However, Netflix won’t completely stop you from watching your account outside of your home. Even if you don’t try to share an account, travel still exists, and it would be an insult to customers if they couldn’t watch Stranger Things from their hotel room. Here’s the Netflix policy for watching outside of your home base: If you’re using a device connected to your home Wi-Fi to watch Netflix, you shouldn’t have any problems using it outside of your home. Watch shows on your iPad at home and it should be smooth when you log into your vacation account.
How to Bypass Netflix “Home Base” Password Restrictions
According to Netflix’s US guidelines, it’s fairly easy to stream on devices that have never connected to your home Wi-Fi. If you try to watch, say, on your smart TV outside of the account holder’s home, you will initiate a verification request for that device. The account owner will receive a four-digit code in their email or phone number, and you must enter this code on your device within 15 minutes. If you do, your device will be checked as part of the household and you should be ready to go.
It appears that Netflix considers this process necessary for family members who travel too long outside their base. However, this is a pretty obvious loophole for people who want to use someone else’s account like they do now. Periodically checking devices probably costs more than an individual Netflix subscription for many people.
Netflix may crack down on US customers in the future
However, don’t worry too much. Netflix may complicate things in the future. In Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, Netflix requires you to sign in to Netflix via your home Wi-Fi once every 31 days . Otherwise, this device will be blocked from the service until it connects to your home Wi-Fi. This makes it difficult to share accounts when people don’t live close to each other, and nearly impossible on non-portable devices. Sure, you can log into Netflix on your laptop or tablet every time you visit your parents, but are you going to carry your smart TV home too?
It’s unclear if this policy also applies to the US: Netflix is currently testing other policies in those countries, including charging for password sharing, so we may or may not see a policy change in the future.
However, according to the US Help Center page, these changes are not yet in place. For those of us who want to continue sharing accounts outside of our family, it should still be fairly easy to do, as long as you don’t mind your friends and family pinging you, “Hey, what’s the Netflix code?”