Netflix to start crackdown on password sharing

Online video streaming service Netflix has revealed that it is keeping an eye on people who share their Netflix’s account passwords to their family and friends. According to some reports, it may start a crackdown against those people.

A survey conducted by Magid tells that 35 percent of millennials share passwords of their Netflix account as compared to the 19 percent of Generation X and 13 percent of Baby Boomers subscribers. The report says that out of 137 million users, 13.7 million are not paying to Netflix. Which cost almost $135 million to Netflix each month.

Executive president at media research company Magid, Jill Rosengard Hill, Said, “The cat is out of the bag,” he added, “I wish I had a solution because it’s really hurting the business model and monetization of these premium high-value services.”

After the circulation of news regarding the expected crackdown of Netflix on password sharing, the chief product officer Greg Peters responded, “We continue to monitor it so we’re looking at the situation and we’ll see [whether there are] consumer-friendly ways to push on the edge of that but I think we’ve got no big plans to announce at this point in time of doing something different there.”

The password sharing issue is not new for online streaming services, but earlier all of them did not take enough measures to stop that. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in 2016 that password sharing “hasn’t been a problem” and it could convince new customers to buy in. HBO CEO Richard Pleper said something same back in 2014, “It’s not that we’re ignoring it, and we’re looking at different ways to affect password sharing. I’m simply telling you: It’s not a fundamental problem.”

The Reports are not being confirmed yet but they can be true. It is a bad dream for all the Netflix users who relies on their friend’s or relative’s account.