Share a Netflix password with your friends or uncle from America and enjoy a "free" subscription?
Those days are coming to an end soon.
Although the streaming giant already announced in 2019 that it plans to fight the common phenomenon of sharing passwords, it has only begun to take practical steps in recent months.
According to estimates, over 100 million viewers enjoy Netflix content with the help of shared passwords, compared to about 230 million paying subscribers.
In other words, for every two people who pay for the service, one person uses the service for free.
Netflix's password-sharing war began with a pilot in several countries in South and Central America.
Although Netflix has not yet expanded its pilot to Israel, a recent update on its support page sheds light on how the company intends to combat the phenomenon.
In general, Netflix will continue to allow subscribers who live under the same roof to share their password, without charging an additional fee.
The innovation is that soon it intends to make sure that those users are indeed living together.
This is how Netflix will prove your physical location
How will she do it?
The company will require subscribers to set what it calls a "primary location" for all accounts that share the same physical address.
To verify this location, the company will monitor several parameters.
It will check the home IP address of the devices on which the streaming application is installed, and cross-reference them with the subscriber's residential address as it appears in his account details and with the activity pattern of the various users.
Also, all users will be asked to connect with their devices at least once a month to the home WiFi network associated with the same IP address, in order to prove that they are indeed physically in the area.
If Netflix detects repeated connections from devices that are not in the same pre-defined primary location, and/or multiple connections from a remote location, those devices will likely be blocked.
To unblock this, the subscriber will have to approve the "suspicious" connection by entering a temporary code received from Netflix, a code that will grant that device free access for seven days.
There is no doubt that this method is fair and efficient when you go on vacation abroad and want to watch from the hotel, but on the other hand - it is not so pleasant to wake up the uncle from America once a week, when you want to watch "Emily in Paris" or the latest season of "Stranger Things" and need a code His.
The new restrictions are expected to go into effect worldwide in the coming weeks.
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