NETFLIX TESTING FEATURE THAT RESTRICTS THE SHARING OF PASSWORDS

LOS ANGELES: Netflix is testing a feature that asks viewers to verify they share a household with the account holder, the company said on Thursday, a move that could lead to a clampdown on the sharing of passwords.

A small number of Netflix users are receiving a message asking them to confirm they live with the account owner by entering details from a text message or email sent to the owner.

Viewers can delay the verification and keep watching Netflix. The message may reappear when they open Netflix again, and eventually they could be required to open a new account to continue streaming.

“This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorised to do so,” a Netflix spokesperson said.

Netflix, the world’s largest streaming service, constantly tests new features with users and it is unclear if the household verification requirement will be implemented more widely.

The Netflix terms of service say that users of an account must live in the same household, though the California-based company and other streaming services have declined to broadly crackdown on sharing.

Netflix has now more than 200 million paid subscribers around the world, which is an increase of more than 30% from the number of paid members it had in 2019, according to a BBC report. At least 37 million new subscribers joined the streaming site last year, including 8.5 million in the last three months alone, the report said.

Chief product officer Greg Peters in 2019, on a earnings call, had acknowledged that the company was looking into the password-sharing issue, but said the Netflix had “got no big plans to announce at this point in time in terms of doing something differently there”, according to the Washington Post report.