Netflix’s long-standing view of “love is sharing a password” has come to an end as the streaming giant has expanded its controversial password sharing crackdown to countries all over Europe. Starting on Tuesday, users who have been sharing their Netflix account with someone outside their household will be receiving a warning email. The countries impacted include France, Germany, Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Netflix’s new policy states that one’s account should only be used by members in the same household. So how will they enforce it? IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity will be monitored to guarantee that just one household is being served with the Netflix account. If sharing the account with someone outside the home, users must either transfer subscribers into a new paid membership or purchase an additional account user, which varies in price per country.
Netflix hopes this strategy, along with ad-based subscriptions, will help bring in more customers in the second half of 2023. Unfortunately, in Spain, the first country to implement such a policy, a study by Kantar showed that Netflix lost one million subscribers in the first quarter of the year. It’s yet to be seen how things will pan out for the other countries.
Netflix is an American streaming service company that has been around since 1997. It’s now the world’s leading streaming entertainment service with 183 million paid memberships in over 190 countries. It provides users with a variety of content options such as films, documentaries, and television shows.
Ioanna is a writer at TNW (The Next Web), a digital media company that was founded in 2008. She has a background in the humanities and covers a broad range of topics within the European tech ecosystem, including startups, sustainability, green tech, AI, and EU policy. Furthermore, she is interested in finding out how technology can be used to reach social impact.
