Netflix changes password rules - no more family sharing for you

(Image credit: Netflix)

Netflix’s password crackdown is upon us and your ability to share your account with your friends and family is more or less over.

The king of streaming has been warning consumers for months about the impending doom of password sharing after reporting continuous subscriber decline over the course of 2022. Now, in details revealed on the company’s help page, we know exactly what’s going to be done to try and prevent you from using your friend’s account.

Netflix will force users to log in via their home Wi-Fi network at least once every 31 days with regular logins from other IP addresses potentially leading to your account getting the ban hammer.

For anyone that has multiple people in their physical household, Netflix will allow anyone on the home network to have their own profile and watch content to their heart’s content. So if you’ve got kids or are living with your parents then nothing is likely to change. If on the other hand, your kids have grown up and moved out to college, or your friend Dave likes to watch Community on repeat then it looks like their time freeloading your Netflix account is over.

Are the good ol’ days over?

There is some hope for Netflix account sharers, as the streaming giant has been testing a feature to add subsequent users for a small fee in South America. If the trial has gone to plan then we could be seeing the ability for users to pay a couple of extra bucks a month in order to share accounts with whoever they please.

With Netflix locking down on sharing accounts, Apple TV Plus’s ability to family share without paying any extra is starting to look like an even better proposition. For users of Apple’s streaming service as long as you’ve created an Apple Family, you’re able to share the love with whoever you please.

John-Anthony Disotto is the How To Editor of iMore, ensuring you can get the most from your Apple products and helping fix things when your technology isn’t behaving itself. Living in Scotland, where he worked for Apple as a technician focused on iOS and iPhone repairs at the Genius Bar, John-Anthony has used the Apple ecosystem for over a decade and prides himself in his ability to complete his Apple Watch activity rings. John-Anthony has previously worked in editorial for collectable TCG websites and graduated from The University of Strathclyde where he won the Scottish Student Journalism Award for Website of the Year as Editor-in-Chief of his university paper. He is also an avid film geek, having previously written film reviews and received the Edinburgh International Film Festival Student Critics award in 2019. John-Anthony also loves to tinker with other non-Apple technology and enjoys playing around with game emulation and Linux on his Steam Deck.

In his spare time, John-Anthony can be found watching any sport under the sun from football to darts, taking the term “Lego house” far too literally as he runs out of space to display any more plastic bricks, or chilling on the couch with his French Bulldog, Kermit.

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