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Sharing Your Netflix Account
- kahlonel 4y agoI’m fine with it if they decrease the subscription fee to a quarter. Nobody I know has 4 TVs in their house. Charging for “4 screens” while enforcing this new policy is a simple cue to unsub Netflix for good.
- greatgib 4y agoWhat is abused is that a lot of customers took the 4k plan to share with family and co and it is usually reasonable because you would not share for more than 4 persons/devices being able to watch at the same time. What is abusive is that Netflix used that possibility as a selling argument justifying the premium of the 4k plan. And it is like they are trying now to make you pay again for the same thing by pretending that they did not expect you to share and that needs a separated option. I understand that now that they reached the ceiling of growth in term of new users they are trying to pivot to continue the growth, but I consider this as a breach of trust for customers, bracing the promise they did before.
- Mindwipe 4y agoNetflix have published the rules for their forthcoming attempts to prevent account sharing.
- malfist 4y agoWhat's the point of having a tier for sharing an account if you can't....share your account?
- brk 4y agoYou can share your account, with other people at your same physical location. You can't share your account with people who are going to be primarily watching Netflix from a different physical location than your own. Does not seem unfair, IMO.
- malfist 4y agoSo you're saying if I have a non-share enabled tier, I can't invite people over to netflix and chill? If that's not what you're saying, then if I don't need sharing for use in the home, then what purpose does the share tier serve if I can't share it?
- tptacek 4y agoMy bet would be that the satisfying condition is disjunctive: either you're watching from an IP range that Netflix trusts, or you're watching from a device that Netflix trusts because it was fingerprinted and used regularly from that IP range. What you can't do is give your password to someone outside your household and have them watch Netflix from their house whenever they want. Which, I mean, obviously that was never really OK.
- riffraff 4y agothe intent is to let you watch a movie in your room while your partner/kids/parents/roommate looks at another in a different one.
- dahart 4y ago> So you're saying if I have a non-share enabled tier, I can't invite people over to netflix and chill? Curious, how did you extract that from the above? Inviting people over to watch with you isn’t sharing your account, nor is it watching from outside your household.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tzs 4y agoSometimes different people in the same household want to watch different things at the same time.
- brk 4y agoAnd they still can.
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoFrom https://www.netflix.com/ChangePlan https://www.netflix.com/ChangePlan Only people who live with you may use your account. Watch on 4 different devices at the same time with Premium, 2 with Standard and 1 with Basic.
- mminer237 4y agoThere isn't a tier for sharing it outside your household. There are different screen tiers, so one person can be watching upstairs, one can be watching downstairs, and one can be watching on the bus, etc. But they're all supposed to live together.
- tzs 4y agoWhat's very annoying is that that those are also the max resolution tiers. It is the 1 screen max 720p tier, the 2 screen 1080p max tier, and the 4 screen 4K UHD tier. The resolution I want and the number of screens I want are almost completely independent, so it is annoying to me that they don't have plans that decouple them.
- sourceless 4y agoSecond they enforce this, I'm unsubscribing
- tedivm 4y agoYeah, same. Their plans included a number of active screens/supported devices a at a time. It seems pretty ridiculous to charge for the number of screens but then put restrictions on where those screens are.
- Hard_Space 4y agoToo right. I only got the 4-person NF account for my elderly Dad. If he's out, I'm unsubscribing and going back to the high seas for their content. What a shame - four years ago was truly the golden age.
- Hamuko 4y agoAnd you need to get those active screens if you want 4K. You can't subscribe to a "one screen @ 4K" plan, you need the full-blown family plan. If you don't want people sharing their login with people, then maybe sell them a single-seat 4K plan.
- athorax 4y agoYep, paying $20/mo specifically to be able to play on 3 devices. If they stop allowing sharing, there is little to no value in that plan for me anymore.
- elektor 4y agoOh boy, here we go. Very curious to see how stringent they are going to be in enforcing this. This is going to disrupt a lot of multi-generational families who share an account but don't all live under the same roof.
- tptacek 4y agoWhat does "multi-generational" have to do with anything? My mom doesn't live under my roof, and also I have no business sharing my Netflix account with her.
- malfist 4y agoMy parents don't live with me and yet they are part of my phone plan. Like netflix I pay a little extra so they can be on it as well as I can. Why is it unreasonable to share an account?
- tptacek 4y agoFor the same reason you can't "share" your cable with your neighbors. Nobody cares that you're related. If you live in different households, you were obviously meant to get different accounts.
- chimeracoder 4y ago> If you live in different households, you were obviously meant to get different accounts. I don't see why that's "obvious". Not only is that the way many other plans work (see: cell phone plans), it's literally how Netflix itself marketed the service for years.
- malfist 4y ago> you were obviously meant to get different accounts Here's a tweet from netflix itself about how great it is to share accounts: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712 https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712
- michaelmior 4y agoI'm still waiting for Netflix to update their profile transfer tool to allow moving profiles to a new account. I was sharing an account and now also have my wife's account. I'd really like to be able to move my profile from the old account to my wife's account to avoid losing history, but the tool currently only allows moving to a completely new account. I really think such a feature is necessary if Netflix really wants people to only share with those in the same household. People in a household change over time and their current model doesn't really facilitate that.
- andsoitis 4y agoDoes this not work for you: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/124844 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/124844
- michaelmior 4y agoThat is for transferring a profile to a new account which is exactly my point. I have another existing account I want to transfer the profile to. I don't want to create a new account.
- andsoitis 4y agoHa. I see. I wonder whether they’ll add that capability. It would also be super useful when people become a couple and move in together… merging your Netflix accounts.
- theFletch 4y agoI'm still unclear on how they are going to do this without significantly affecting the customer experience.
- tptacek 4y agoProbably by cookie-ing or fingerprinting your device, and then tying that to IP geolocation. They don't need to get close to 100% accuracy and they can do things to err on the lenient side. It doesn't seem that hard a problem compared to other anti-fraud systems I've seen. I think it'll probably work fine.
- mikeyouse 4y agoThat’s exactly what Hulu started doing. You have a “home location” and if someone logs in from far enough away to trigger their systems, they’ll have them set that location as your new home. You’re only allowed 4 of those changes per year without calling some support line so it seems pretty effective.
- athorax 4y agoHow does that work for Hotels or if you regularly travel between two locations?
- tptacek 4y agoFor Netflix, you get a travel pass. But, more importantly: the allow condition is probably disjunctive: trusted device OR trusted location. If you're just watching on your laptop or iPad, you're probably fine no matter where you are.
- fomine3 4y agoa nerd: I always bring NUC and streaming stick to hotel!
- hbn 4y ago
- andyish 4y agoRemember when their marketing gimmick was "Love is sharing your password"
- ericmay 4y agoHow does this affect those with family plans through T-Mobile who get "Netflix on us"? It's Netflix at the account level, not individual line. Hopefully no change.
- V__ 4y agoLet's make our content offering worse, start blocking account sharing and also increase our prices. Decreasing the value to their customers thrice is a bold strategy.. let's see how it plays out.
- fredsters_s 4y agomoving from offense to defense... tends to be a bad sign
- gigabates 4y agoBut... https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712 https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712
- elashri 4y agoI wonder when they are going to remove this tweet?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- parrot987 4y agoPirating is about to skyrocket.
- ushtaritk421 4y agoNetflix hasn't had content worth watching in awhile
- andsoitis 4y ago230 million paying households around the world + ? Million people sharing would disagree with you.
- _Algernon_ 4y agoinertia
- andsoitis 4y agoThat’s really selling people short. I don’t believe that that many households are paying even though they don’t think they’re getting value for money.
- taeric 4y agoI'm not sure I care that they are trying to get people to stop sharing accounts. At large, that feels fine and I'm always curious the lengths people will go through to not pay a small subscription fee. Especially for things they actively use the heck out of. (Notably, I seem to only know of people that do this where both sides of the share watch a ton of television.) I am not at all looking forward to it again thinking I'm sharing my account within the same household. Last time they were trying this, I had to setup the kids TVs, again. Was very annoying.
- fbernier 4y agoI can't think of a way they can enforce almost anything without annoying a bunch of people with false positives. If someone has a secondary home like a chalet they go to from time to time, they'd have to pay for a second account?
- tptacek 4y agoNo, because they do explicit vacation passes. If you literally maintain two households --- or, like my family, have a kid in a college apartment --- you're probably going to have to spring for a second account. Which, fair enough: the college apartment also requires us to spring for a second ISP bill, second utilities, second toaster; it was nice to get away with not duplicating the Netflix bill, but not reasonable to feel entitled to it.
- taeric 4y agoProbably will impact folks that travel and want to watch while away from home. Specifically, those where their family did not travel with them. That said, probably easy enough to deal with that, as I'm guessing most of them take a common device with them? Not sure. But, yeah, your example is pretty much how I view this. Was nice for a few cases where it was working. But hardly earth shattering.
- tptacek 4y agoI don't know anything about Netflix's system, but similar-seeming anti-fraud systems just fingerprint devices. Chances are, if you normally watch from your laptop or iPad and travel a lot, you're not going to notice any changes.
- lowkeylazers 4y agoI’m a DN and travel in and out of my primary location. This means I’ll need two or more Netflix accounts?
- ZeroCool2u 4y agoMy Mom lives on the West Coast while we live on the East. She's almost 70 and on a fixed income, so I pay for Netflix access for all of us and I'm happy to do so. However, if they block her access I can't see any reason to keep my 4k plan. I can get anything we want on a Plex server and give her whatever she wants to watch that way. I was already on the fence with the lack of content on Netflix, but this may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
- dairyleia 4y agoI'm in a similar situation with my mother-in-law. I'd happily pay a bit more each month to support her Netflix account. If they block her, we may just cancel the subscription completely.
- BulgarianIdiot 4y agoSo your thesis is that piracy is cheaper. Ok thanks.
- jwozn 4y agoPlex isn't necessarily piracy.
- oliwarner 4y agoI upvoted this because it's technically true, but common "legal" use-cases involve format shifting and that puts you out of bounds straight away, depending on your jurisdiction. Even if your area allows it for "backups" or interop, you're making it available in multiple locations at once. I'm sure it wouldn't take much to demonstrate this was some sort of performance or other act explicitly disallowed by the EULA. But I'm sure you're just sharing Big Buck Bunny ;) My point isn't that it's illegal, only that it's disingenuous enough to suggest it is legal. Plex definitely lies in a grey area of tolerated home use, with features that turn it into a piracy nightmare.
- rvschuilenburg 4y ago
- bena 4y agoI have a decent television at my house. I don't need to watch Netflix on my laptop/tablet/phone at my "primary location". I only need to do that when I'm out and about. There should be a clear exception for IPs belonging to hotels. Or if a lot of different accounts are all coming from the same IP. That should indicate a transient population and would likely mean that the account holder is the one trying to watch Netflix. I fucking logged in. I pay for 4(?) screens at once. It's the same whether you're delivering 4 streams to one IP or 4 streams to 4 IPs.
- vsskanth 4y agoMe and my friends watch netflix only on TV and subscribe to the 4K plan, one TV each. Now, if they make us buy our own plans, they should atleast make a single-device UltraHD tier.
- nicklevin 4y agoTotally agree. I give out my password to friends because their current tiers (4k also means you get 4 screens) make it seem like I’m paying extra to be able to do so.
- jakehansen 4y agoI wonder how the “fingerprinting” will deal with users who access Netflix primarily through a VPN or relay service. On Netflix’s side, they would see multiple accounts accessing the service via the same IP ranges.
- raydev 4y agoVPNs still work with Netflix? Way back when Netflix was mostly still non-original content and movies, the US had a far superior selection compared to Canada, so a lot of us Canadians used VPNs to get access to US content. Around 2015 Netflix clamped down hard on VPNs, such that I couldn't even use them to watch any content, let alone content from specific countries. I tried a few options and all failed, so I assumed most other people gave up with me.
- _Algernon_ 4y agoPirate life is so much more convenient than these constant rug pulls by conglomerates. Just sayin'
- erickhill 4y agoWhat if you own, for example, a lake house? No Netflix for the same family using a different house on occasion?
- andsoitis 4y agoIn the linked article they talk about the travel use case.
- flanbiscuit 4y ago> Watch Netflix while traveling or from a different location? > If you are traveling or live between different places, you can continue to enjoy Netflix. > If you are away from your primary location for an extended period of time, your device may be blocked from watching Netflix. You can request a temporary access code to continue watching. Vague answer. It's ok until it's not ok. How long is an "for an extended period of time"? A month? a couple of months?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 4y agoI could swear it said seven days when I looked at the link, but now it doesn’t say that.
- el_don_almighty 4y agoWho has the best loop-back server & router setup for those with enough fiber to server their extended family who like to smoke Laramie's?
- keammo1 4y agoWhy not just let me pay more for a seamless experience where I can share X number of profiles outside my household? Instead, next time I'm at my parents I have to spend time setting up all their devices again?
- lostphilosopher 4y agoI'm ok with not allowing multi "household" sharing in principle, but I doubt this can be enforced without causing problems for even for single household users and seems like an odd way to handle this. Thinking about travel especially. Restricting the number of currently streaming devices makes way more sense to me and should support "add a screen" up charges. Rather than fighting the "sharing" use case - why not find a way to monetize it?
- dylan604 4y agoThe add a screen up charge seems like such an obvious move. There's an up charge for 4k, so why not this? It just seems like an easy fix. Would it eliminate 100% of the problem being addressed, no, but it would go a long long way for PR moves. Then again, it's easy to arm chair other people's decisions.
- dogma1138 4y agoThey already are restricting the number of devices and charge you for extra. Im paying for the 4K plan in the UK which comes with up to 4 devices simultaneously. We have Netflix installed on the TV, consoles, mine and my other half’s mobile devices and based on the T&C when I signed up it’s ok because it’s a single household. However I don’t see how they’ll enforce no sharing whilst not breaking existing household account usage.
- 8fingerlouie 4y agoI can hardly wait to see how this plays out in my family. 2 adults, 2 kids, multiple devices (Phones/Tables/AppleTV/"Smart" TVs), multiple homes, one 4 stream subscription. On average i would say each user has about 3 devices capable of watching Netflix, and on any given day i would say 8-12 different IP addresses are in use, depending on commutes to/from school/work. Add to that the summerhouse which also has AppleTV. And while i don't mind them trying to limit password sharing, i will not spend my time defending myself over legitimate use, so the second this bothers me i'm hitting the unsubscribe button. I have enough "time robbers" to deal with, and i'm too old to deal with stuff that doesn't work by itself once setup. Keeping the internet/wifi running is work enough, i don't need the extra stress of signing in my kids devices every n days.
- travisporter 4y agoCan i have my parents vpn in to my home network? Or will Netflix somehow block that like it blocks commercial vpn services
- r2_pilot 4y agoThe nice thing about VPN to your home network is that traffic leaving it will be indistinguishable from your own home traffic from Netflix's perspective.
- nfreising 4y agoAs the person paying for a Netflix account used by my household, I don’t really care from a monetary standpoint. However I don’t like technical barriers Netflix is erecting. Tracking IPs, Device-IDs and linking them to location info. I pay for the service and I’m not okay with these extensive measures.
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoBuy a small router (like one from gl-inet), set up wireguard to VPN back to your household router. Connect Netflix device to that router.
- bogomipz 4y agoI'm curious, have people had good experience with these? Any specific model recommendations? They look great!
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoI have the GL-MT1300 (Beryl) device. I think it works fine. I've used it for travel and it did really well at providing a VPN using the hotel network. It has a UI on top of OpenWRT which I like as I think OpenWRT is a bit too fidly for me.
- taylodl 4y agoI don't care. Netflix is free to run their business into the ground as they see fit. I've been thinking about cancelling anyway because their content just isn't worth the cost. This helps make the decision. Coming soon to HN: announcement of massive layoffs at Netflix.
- ColonelBlimp 4y agoThe logic of many responses in this thread remind me of George Costanza’s “preemptive break up”.
- wereallterrrist 4y agoTo try to be generous/polite, how am I supposed to read many of these comments other than... rampantly entitled? Regarding concurrent stream plans, I'm afraid you're going to have a very bad not great day if you get mad about every tech-y company over-selling to unsuspecting consumers... Or are we keeping with the feigned-ignorance thing and acting like a company growth-hacking and rug-pulling customers is anything but absolutely run-of-the-mill.
- dns_snek 4y agoI don't understand, first you describe other users "rampantly entitled" then you explain perfectly legitimate reasons for them to be annoyed with this decision?
- wereallterrrist 4y agoI... i dont even think there's a way to have conversations here anymore. There are undoubtedly people here who work for countless startups that do thr exact same thing, use countless products that work the exact same way. And yet, 2 threads a day about how Netflix implementing something theyve warned about doing for literally years. Lol! Its like this site having more pity for consumerist tech workers that pissed away hundreds of thousands a year versus rhe empathy displayed for otherwise actually poor, disenfranchised folks.
- revlolz 4y agoNetflix is hiring roles for digital ads teams where they specifically mention wanting to push ads on the platform to subscribers. Netflix got captured and is now in the process of killing its core user experiences paying customers enjoy. It's inevitable poor performance as a result of these unfriendly changes and the terrible content they create has enacted death by a thousand cuts we see for each one of the online platforms like Facebook.
- pavo-etc 4y agoThe Netflix Enshittification
- kderbyma 4y agoThey are dense as $##&. 15 years and almost no innovation except a slightly worse catalogue and a reduction of genres....and now ads. quality! mwah! beautiful! I want the product team working on my tombstones...they know death
- lockhouse 4y agoNetflix has no real incentive to innovate because every other streaming service delivers an even worse UX. The only thing keeping the others afloat is their content. The one saving grace is that all of this streaming mess is still a better experience overall than cable and satellite TV.
- smugma 4y agoIf I were Netflix, I’d first block simultaneous streaming in multiple locations. So many comments below talk about giving parents/siblings access and they barely use it (I fall in this camp). If that’s true, you’ll almost never notice the restrictions. But if it’s Friday night and your mom is watching Emily in Paris and you want to watch Seinfeld, you’ll decide to either watch something else, pay up for another account, or decide you don’t want to pay more for something you and your mom are both wanting (at the same time).
- panda88888 4y agoNetflix already limit number of simultaneous streams. Higher tier allows more simultaneous streams.
- mordae 4y agoYeah... and recently I have to reset my ESN every 24 hours to be able to stream at 1080. Drops to 540p otherwise. I don't watch 4k, I am at premium for those 4 streams. One for my sister who doesn't earn yet and one for my in-laws who wouldn't sub themselves. I think I'll just drop it.
- ed_db 4y agoLooks like they've now retracted it from the site: Here is a screenshot before it was removed https://i.imgur.com/EpyIkux.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/EpyIkux.jpeg
- fragmede 4y agoI wonder, given the website interface on a laptop (ie not the smartphone app) how they're going to detect when someone's VPN'd into home using, eg, Tailscale. Traffic is going to look like it's coming from home and, except for ping times, which could be blamed on bad wireless interference, seems like it would be undetectable to Netflix.
- wdb 4y agoLooks like as long you can reach the other person within 15 minutes to get the code. It's all fine?
- autoexec 4y agoDepending on how often they make you do it. I'm not looking forward to having to jump through hoops to access netflix when I'm not even using all of the screens I'm paying for.
- edude03 4y agoWonder what this will mean for watch Netflix on mobile devices and funny enough, in cars
- remram 4y agoI don't know why we are treating this article as news. Everyone in the comments seems to be wondering about how much they will enforce it in the coming days. The truth is that the article has been up since at least March last year (http://web.archive.org/web/20220321152735/https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277 http://web.archive.org/web/20220321152735/https://help.netfl...)
- alam2000 4y ago[dead]
- vivegi 4y agoCanceled them yesterday. I had been dragging my feet for a while; had been using a 4-screen plan and with their recent price changes and these policy changes and not-so-great content lineup, the cancellation decision has been easy. I am sure many people feel similarly. Bucking the most recent quarterly bump in their subscriber count trend, they are likely to see a backlash and drop in subscribers, one they won’t recover from because those subs aren’t coming back.
- gliiics 4y agoI used to think that every action these big corps do, has been calculated for months by a team of analytics professionals and even the most apparently nonsensical move has a calculated ROI. After seeing Meta burn money into their metaverse furnace and Netflix insisting on this, I'm starting to think that might not be the case. Then again, Netflix has talked about shared accounts for so long that it only looks like China's final warning at this point.
- JonChesterfield 4y agoIs there a place to buy non-pirated films/TV for download yet? For replacing netflix with a dlna server.
- brokenmachine 4y agoOf course not. Your options for your own server are high seas, or pray they use vaseline.