Netflix‘s war on password sharing hasn’t had a new chapter in quite a while. The streaming giant’s enforcement saw the platform gaining millions of new subscribers, with families doubling down with several users per household.
For reference, Netflix lets you have up to five profiles per account. This is legal, as long as those using said profiles live in the same household as the account owner.
I never share my Netflix password with friends and family until I do these 6 things
Time to have that “come to Baby Jesus meeting”
This era of carefree account sharing within the household, too, seems to now be hitting a speedbump. The streaming giant’s next big behavioral shift includes a change to household profiles.
According to several users on Reddit, Netflix is now asking users to assign a unique email address to each individual profile within a shared Netflix account (via Android Authority).
Previously, you’d only need one email address. The one used to create the Netflix account. Now, the streaming giant is prompting users to add a new email right after opening the app.
“Personalised new ways to enjoy Netflix are coming,” reads the prompt. It adds, “Add an email address to your profile for easier sign-in access, to recover your account, get personalised suggestions and more.”
This isn’t a huge deal for multiple users within the same household. Everyone has an email address, and adding a new one, despite the unnecessary data collection, is not going to take much effort.
However, this is going to be an unnecessary speed bump for individual users with multiple profiles for different need. For example, if you have different profiles for different types of content, you’ll now have to create and share unique email addresses for each.
The saving grace here is that this doesn’t seem to be a widespread change. I have multiple profiles on my Netflix accounts and I haven’t encountered the prompt just yet.
Additionally, according to user goodashbadash79, there’s an easy way to turn the prompt off (at least for now).
- Go to your Account settings on Netflix (or visit netflix.com/account).
- Head over to the Security section.
- Turn off Feature testing.
This should remove the prompt for good, but, that is, until Netflix makes it compulsory. Are you seeing the prompt on your account? Let us know in the comments below!
