Some Netflix users have started to receive a message that says “if you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to continue watching”. According to a company spokesman, this is a feature that is being tested to “ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so”. In some cases of this test, a code is sent by email or SMS to the contacts registered in the account to verify that whoever is actually using it can do so. Whoever is unable to complete the verification within a certain period, is no longer able to access the platform and is invited to create a new one.
With more than 200 million active users, it is not known how many of them actually share access to accounts with people who do not live in the same house. The term used by Netflix does not clarify the concept of ‘sharing the home’, not specifying whether it is a physical residence or whether, for example, children studying abroad can have the same account as their parents, recalls the The Verge.
This measure, in practice, may not help to circumvent the practice, since the friend can still send the code to the ‘illegal’ user, thus authenticating him. It is not known how many accounts received this message, nor whether Netflix will extend the verification mechanism to the entire platform.
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