The day Netflix users have been dreading has finally come. The crackdown on password sharing has started in countries like Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain. Users will now have to pay extra if the account is being used outside the primary household.
No More Password Sharing
If you are in the previously mentioned countries, you'll have to designate a primary household location for unrestrained access to your Netflix account. Anyone using the account outside the household's IP address will have to pay extra to continue using it.
The additional charges will be $8 for Canada and New Zealand, €4 for Portugal, and €6 for Spain. It will also be limited to two extra users outside of the designated household. Although according to Engadget, you can still watch on your phone or a smart TV anywhere else.
It's Netflix's way of compromising to be able to share one account without having to pay full price for another. Another reason is that more than 100 million households sharing accounts are impacting Netflix's ability to invest in new content, says product director Chengyi Long.
If users decide to pay for a separate account altogether, they won't have to lose their Netflix history of watched content. They can choose to convert a profile into an entirely new account, which is a win for both the user and Netlfix for gaining another subscriber.
The charges on password sharing are not set in stone, according to Netflix. They will be making changes based on customer feed as they roll out the policy in the coming months, meaning that it's possible for the extra fees to go down.
The new policy may actually hurt Netflix's numbers even more since other streaming services don't have additional fees for profiles outside a household, yet. Users will also be less inclined to pay extra for an account that isn't theirs to begin with.
Transferring a Profile to Another Account
If you don't feel like paying someone else to get a fraction of their account, you can sign up for a new one. You can even transfer the "progress" that you have spent countless hours watching so you won't have to lose start over, and here's how you do it.
The first step is going to a web browser and signing into the account that has your profile. Go to the Account page, or simply locate the option in the profile selection drop-down on your homepage, as suggested by Netlifx.
Select the profile you want to start a new account with, which you'll see in the Profiles and Parental Controls section. Look for the Transfer link in the Transfer Profile section, and then enter the email address and password you want to use for a new account.
All you have to do next is follow the prompts on the screen and you're all done. Note that Netflix will keep a copy of your profile on the previous account, so you can leave it there, ask the owner to just delete it, or delete it yourself.
