Netflix is going to kick your best friend, your girlfriend and the grand-aunt whom you saw last festive season who doesn’t know how to use her new Smart TV – out of your account. The time has come for password-sharing to be a thing of the past – or so Netflix hopes.
If you’re an owner of a Netflix account living in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines and have been sharing your password, you probably would’ve received an email update from vNetflix earlier today.
In the update, the streaming giant asserts that a Netflix account is for use by only one household. That means the people you physically live with – your mom, dad, siblings, housemates if you’re renting etc – would count as members of your household. So if you’ve been sharing an account and splitting the subscription fee with your partner who lives on the other side of the country, sorry that won’t fly with Netflix anymore.
The only people you can share your account with are again, the people you live with, but there are some caveats. For starters, you will need to set a primary location for your account. That way Netflix knows if the people and the devices using your account are actually from the same household/location or not.
If Netflix suspects that a person outside your household is attempting to use the account, a prompt will be sent for you to check who’s using your Netflix account. The user can then review which devices are signed in and eventually sign out whoever shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Whatever happened to love is sharing a password? Well, we live in a capitalist society so unfortunately, love doesn’t come for free. If you would like to share a Netflix account, you can add an extra member – but for the price of S$6.98/month on top of your current subscription. This only applies to those who are currently on a standard (S$17.48/month) or premium (S$21.98/month) subscription plan.
Extra members will have their own account and password, but their membership is paid for by the person who invited them to share their Netflix account. Your plan also determines how many extra member slots you can add. For the standard plan, you can add one extra member who doesn’t live with you. For the premium plan, you can add up to two extra members.
Need more members? That’s too bad. Netflix says you have to get your own subscription.
Starting your own subscription isn’t so bad. Netflix now offers the option to transfer a profile. This means an existing profile from an existing account can be transferred to a new one, including recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games settings and more. You’re basically copying and pasting the profile to a new account.
This isn’t the most exciting nor welcomed news, especially since it’s finally reached home for many Asian subscribers but this has been a long time coming.
Don’t judge a book by its cover, for behind all this makeup, is a geek just like you. To simply put it, superheroes, Star Wars, Harry Potter and all things gore and creepy makes this girly girl swoon.
Kevin Low
Si Jia
Natalie
