Netflix’s plan to crackdown on account sharing is heading to New Zealand, but how does the policy work?
The streaming giant, which hiked its prices in early 2022, is introducing a new feature that expects you to pay for the ability to share your Netflix account. Not a huge price increase, mind you, but a price increase nonetheless.
“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans,” a Netflix blog post read in March 2022.
“While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”
With the test rolling out to New Zealand, along with Spain, Portugal and Canada, Netflix has revealed a bit more of how it’ll work, outside of its contained tests in Chile, Coasta Rica and Peru over 2022. The change comes a week after Netflix posted policy changes on the U.S. support website before pulling them.
Netflix’s new account sharing rules
Here’s how it works: users will need to set a primary location for the account. A new ‘Managing Access and Devices’ page will let users control who and what devices have account access.
Users will still be able to use their Netflix accounts when travelling, such as in hotel rooms, according to the Netflix blog post. The account will need to be logged in to at the primary location every 31 days, otherwise, access outside of the primary location would be restricted.
If you’re sharing your account with people outside of your household, you can ‘buy’ extra members that don’t live at the primary location. Standard plans have one extra member purchase available, while premium users can add two extra members. These cost an extra $NZD7.99, which converts to about $11.50 in Australia at the time of writing (though Australia hasn’t received the policy change yet).
Account users can transfer their profiles to other accounts if migrating to another household, saving your list, history and recommendations.
Customers in New Zealand will be sent emails over the next three days outlining the policy changes, as reported by Stuff.co.nz.
Currently, in Australia, Netflix uses prompts (like phone and email verification) to crackdown on account sharing when an account is accessed outside of a household or persistently accessed from a location outside of the household, but obviously, this isn’t a foolproof solution.
The extra members feature might actually end up saving some people money. If your family members all use separate Netflix accounts, for example, you could consolidate them all under one master account and end up saving money.
But speaking broadly, Netflix thinks people are account sharing outside of their homes too much. The policy will be rolled out to more countries over the coming months.
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