One of the age-old methods to keep up with the giant variety of streaming services is account sharing. You’re only supposed to share accounts within your household. But if we’re being honest, plenty of people share with friends, neighbors, and a cool dude they met once. Now Netflix is testing messages to cut back on sharing outside your household. Get ready to verify.
As first spotted by The Streamable, the message comes with a stern warning and a request to verify your identity. The prompt reads: “If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching.” It asks for a verification code from the account owner, sent via email or text. If you don’t verify, Netflix will ask you to create a new account.
It’s not a true surprise. Netflix’s terms of use state that content on the site is “for your personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your household.” The exact definition of a household isn’t clear. It could mean only those physically living in your home, or Netflix may allow children away at college. The company doesn’t say. The message people are seeing, however, states “if you don’t live with the owner of this account…” so that’s not a good sign for children out of the home.
Clarity on the subject would be nice, and for now, the test seems to be limited in nature. We can only find a few Tweets corroborating the message, though Netflix did confirm the test in a statement to The Verge. As it stands, if you’re borrowing Netflix from a friend in another city, that might come to an end soon.
via The Streamable