Netflix Cracking Down On Shared Accounts

Photo Credit to: Nodstrum.com

Do you watch Netflix?  Do you pay for it?  One of the best things about Netflix (besides the ability to binge-watch 37 straight episodes of your favourite show) is that if you had a friend or family member with a Netflix account you didn’t even have to pay for it.

I’ll admit, I don’t pay for Netflix, my wife Julie’s sister has a Netflix account that we piggyback on.  She lives in BC and at first I thought for sure Netflix would notice that someone from Winnipeg was using this account from BC and shut us down, but it never happened, so I figured they just didn’t care.

And I’m not the only one doing this.  26% of people say that they have shared their user/password info with friends or relatives!! These seemingly small acts of theft add up too; according to research by Parks Associates, as much as $9.9 billion of losses for streaming companies and $1.2 billion of over-the-top (OTT) revenues.

So I guess it’s not a surprise that Netflix is looking into cracking down on these “shared accounts” moving forward.

At CES 2019, a technology event that just took place in Las Vegas, video software provider Synamedia unveiled a creepy new AI-powered system designed to crack down on account sharing.

The creepy software works by analyzing which accounts are logged in at any one time and from where, so they can determine who is sharing their credentials.  This AI tech is so advanced it is able to determine where users are accessing the streaming service, so it can tell whether you’re at your actual home, a friends, or even at a holiday home, for example.

And – somehow – it can tell if people are sharing their account with friends or adult children.

Subscribers who are giving their password to adult kids who’ve left home will be offered the chance to sign up to a ‘premium account’, which will allow them to share their details with more than one person.

Synamedia says that Netflix has already started with trials on this software and hopes to have it fully implemented by 2020….which I guess is when I’ll start paying for my own Netflix.