End of Netflix Password Sharing Era, Crackdown Starts in US, Canada & Other Countries

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Netflix has begun cracking down on password sharing in all major countries, including the USA. The campaign has been in its pipelines for a long time and was finally executed on Tuesday when the company sent an email to all US subscribers who were sharing their Netflix password with people outside their households.

The campaign was rolled out in countries like New Zealand, Canada, Portugal, and Spain earlier this year and finally reached the US this week. In the coming weeks and months, it’ll expand to the remaining countries.

Netflix is doing its best to make this transition as simple as possible for its users. For starters, it’s helping people view all the devices that are logged into their account so that they can remove the ones that don’t belong there.

For those who were using someone else’s account, Netflix has paved an easy way out for them with their “Transfer Profile” feature, which they can use to set up an account of their own and import their watchlist and viewing history.

Is There Any Way To Share Your Password With People Outside Your Household?

The only Netflix-approved way to share your password with other users is through their paid sharing feature. Under this feature, you can add an extra member to your profile at an additional monthly fee of $7.99.

If you want to end your Netflix Subscription altogether, you can transfer it to another user.

They’ll be able to enjoy the rest of your subscription plan and then continue as long as they pay.

Why The Sudden Change?

Password sharing is nothing new, and it’s not like it hasn’t been brought to Netflix’s attention before. The company previously gave leeway to users sharing passwords because it could still meet their ultimate goal, i.e., to grow their revenue.

However, Netflix has recently realized that allowing password sharing at such a massive scale will hamper its growth in the long run, and it’ll miss out on millions of potential customers.

Now, an action like this should enrage the users and turn them against the OTT platform. However, the reality is quite the opposite. As Netflix pointed out, every country initially had a “cancel” reaction when the news broke out. But in terms of acquisition and revenue, there has been tremendous growth.

In fact, the rollout in the US was supposed to take place earlier this year but was intentionally postponed to the summer, fearing a massive boycott reaction as they had seen in other countries. Since the US is one of Netflix’s biggest customer bases, it simply couldn’t be risked.

However, once the growth reports started to roll in and it was found that the initial wave of rage had settled and led to more subscribers and revenue, Netflix dared to take the leap in the US.

Although lower than the estimated 3 million increase, its growth in subscriber base is still excellent.

Now that the campaign is out in the US, it’ll be interesting to see if Netflix can continue to survive in one of its biggest and most competitive markets.