Netflix May Crack Down On Password Sharing (mobilesyrup.com) 94
Netflix has always been aware of password sharing and has never seemed to mind it, but that attitude may change as the company says it's looking into "consumer-friendly ways" to address the issue. When Guggenheim Securities' Miachael Morris asked about it, Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said: "We continue to monitor it. "We're looking at the situation and we'll [look for] those consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that." However, Neumann noted that Netflix has "no big plans to announce at this time in terms of doing something different" with how password sharing works. MobileSyrup reports: As it stands, users can sign into Netflix on as many devices as they want, with the only limitation being how many can stream at the same time (depending on the plan). Naturally, this allows people to share their accounts with family or friends. Given how open this is, it's possible that Netflix would want to reduce the number of devices an account can be registered to. For example, Sony allows users to share content between PlayStation 4 systems by logging into the same account, although it limits this functionality to two consoles. Trying to do this with additional consoles could get an account flagged and blocked.
They already limit streams. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wow, you seem very angry. Why are you a subscriber at all?
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Re:They already limit streams. (Score:4, Insightful)
So you had quit movie piracy to leach off of someone elses account that they are paying for and if Netflix cracks down on you you go back to movie piracy.
So in essence they didn't loose a customer, they just got rid of a freeloader.
I also love your argument that Netflix which has a huge library completely sucks except for the stuff that you like. Which is true about most large collection of things. You go to your public library there are droves of books on topics that are not interesting or stories that you find dull and uninspired, but there is a topic that you like to read about and your favorite authors that you like to read and reread.
Now a better argument would be that Netflix doesn't offer you enough material that you want to watch, and you feel that it isn't worth the price to keep paying for that service, especially if you cannot share the password with someone who may be offsetting your cost.
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It isn't his fault netflix only gives you one username/password in exchange for your monthly payment for one account. Until that changes you have no choice but to share your one username/password with all of the devices you own.
It's baffling how you think paying them $13/month means you are not a customer though, and you think paying $13/month is freeloading. I mean sure that's a good price IMHO too, but hardly zero!
What is baffling is how you can reach the conclusion that a $13 subscription that limiting you to having two streams going on at the same time is somehow an affront to your civil liberties. Freeloading is something you do, not something you are constitutionally entitled to.
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So you had quit movie piracy to leach off of someone elses account that they are paying for and if Netflix cracks down on you you go back to movie piracy.
So in essence they didn't loose a customer, they just got rid of a freeloader.
And that in itself represents an increase in revenues for Netflix who has to pay for the bandwidth the freeloader is burning up so by reducing the bandwidth consumption of this particularly user-id to whatever the original subscriber is consuming as opposed to him and all of his friends, that is a win for Netflix.
Re: They already limit streams. (Score:1)
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Group pricing, mayhaps?
That would help Netflix learn more about their customers' close-in extended social networks, and perhaps jumpstart a native social sharing experience?
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Why is this even being discussed? This sounds like marketing FUD from other streaming companies.
It's also something they announce every other Tuesday and then never actually follow through with.
Re:They already limit streams. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Says who? Some fucking useless drivel producing parasite that never did anything of use to anyone in their entire life?
Re:They already limit streams. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it sounds like they're attempting to scare the freeloaders into getting their own Netflix accounts. Good luck with that.
I think that they know that if they actually cracked down hard on this, it would annoy a bunch of subscribers enough to cause them to cancel their accounts and switch to another streaming service. Not exactly a good move to make now that Apple TV+ and Disney+ are launching their own streaming services soon.
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They're not trying to scare anybody.
Somebody not from Netflix asked a Netflix guy "Do you care about password sharing?"
The answer was "Maybe kinda, but not enough to do anything about it right now".
ARTICLE HEADLINE - NETFLIX CRACKING DOWN
*Sponsored by Disney
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I doubt it. They might piss off all the freeloaders and very few of them might convert into revenue, but do people really believe that Aunt Jenny is gonna cancel her Netflix (or HBO Go or whatever) account just because her nephew that she sees twice a year on the holidays can't log in to her account anymore? Is she really gonna switch to Hulu just so he can get back on the gravy train?
Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't see a lot of the "primary" subscribers bolting from it. They might be moderately upset, an
Re: They already limit streams. (Score:3)
I'd imagine that a lot of people (like myself) are getting annoyed by Netflix's crummy movie selection, price increases, and increasing reliance of mediocre self produced content.
Cutting off a relative who only uses the service to watch Cheers reruns twice a month would probably be enough to convince me to finally cancel my service.
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Cutting off a relative who only uses the service to watch Cheers reruns twice a month would probably be enough to convince me to finally cancel my service.
I like this quote. Yeah, I pay extra to Netflix for the additional screens because of the moochers in my life. If they can't use my Netflix, it certainly won't be worth it to me to pay extra. And frankly I don't need Netflix, so if any change happens, it would probably just be to cancel it.
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Re: They already limit streams. (Score:1)
They advertised it that way (Score:5, Interesting)
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Three. Season six just started a couple of weeks ago.
This must be the streaming version of reruns on broadcast TV.
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Canadian Netflix gets new episodes of the latest Flash season on Thursdays.
Maybe you need to VPN to Canada.
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NetFlix needs a configuration option to "Don't show me new seasons until the season is complete".
If I wanted to watch shit on a broadcast TV schedule I'd just put up an antenna and watch it when it was broadcast.
They also need an option to turn off all that fucking godawful damn annoying "auto preview" and "auto-play without me selecting "play"" shit. It is really very damn fucking annoying.
Re:They advertised it that way (Score:5, Insightful)
Competition is a good thing, but it should be between the show producers, not the streaming services.
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With disney+ presumably swallowing all disney content, and Netflix producing content, and apple, hulu, and amazon all producing content, are you sure that isn't what we already have?
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Competition is usually a good thing, but in this case it would make people have to pay for too many different services.
You don't have to stay subscribed to all of them. Just go to one for a month, watch what you want to see, then go to the next. When you're through all of them take a break until they have a decent amount of new stuff that's worth starting over again.
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Diversity for streaming services should be good to the consumers, the problem with the likes of CBS All Access and Disney+ is that they owned the content they stream, and we are paying a monthly fee for only their content. If I want to watch Marvel Movies and Star Trek, I shouldn't need to have to pay for every channel independently, where I could also pick services that may the shows available in one package.
Yes this is counter to the old argument we have been having with Cable TV for decades, that they a
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It turns out that paying $60 per month for 5 channels isn't actually an improvement over paying $60 per month for 105 channels and ignoring 100 of them.
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The problem is that we've seen this from some of the slimiest providers. They claim they're going after abusers. I guarantee it goes something like this:
1-200 users have some
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I'm pretty share they advertised that you can share it with people that way.
I don't think they ever advertised it that way, but their written policies used to be very generous about what was allowed. I specifically remember checking that I was in the clear before sharing my password with a younger sibling who was in college at the time. Back then (I signed up when Netflix launched on the Wii, so maybe around 2008 or so?), I recall that they permitted sharing an account with other members of your "household", with "household" being very generously defined to include a huge number of
What the market will bear ... (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a Netflix account. We stream to a Firestick on our TV, my laptop, my desktop, my wife's laptop, my Fire, my wife's iPad, and both our phones. That's eight devices between the two of us. How might Netflix differentiate us from an extended family/friend network of eight people other than a pattern of banging into the number of simultaneous streaming attempts? We have Amazon Prime as well. If Netflix charges per device, for example, the inconvenience will lead us to cancel. That's it. We can't be the only people with a lot of devices.
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- IP addresses?
- Correlating device fingerprints/user agents?
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The problem is family of four and mobile devices, they want the account for them. They do not want that family of four account for four university students living together or shared across many households. Of course making sure not too many people log in across household is problematic, as a account hacks. At the moment they are feeling the pinch of people rotating services, Netflix will likely be the core streamer but they will lose months of revenue every year to the other more temporary streamers.
They n
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PS I did recently swap to Stan but the main reason, I am a slacker and I wanted to watch some other series that I already owned and I am too lazy to get up and swap dvds all the time, and the streamers let me track which episode of which series and binge for a time on each one swapping binge sessions to binge sessions. So dropped netflix went with local yokel and in bunch of months I'll probably swap again, to watch stuff I already own and up too lazy to swap DVDs.
So far the best on Netflix has been old St
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Just as long as I can turn all that shit OFF and not have to see it. Otherwise, bye bye NutFlix... go join NutScraper which suffered the same fate due to putting to much shit in their shitbox.
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Machine id?
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You don't do a hard limit on IP addresses, you can put some intelligence behind the search.
Your install has a fingerprint, it's easy to say "oh that phone moved around these IP addresses" and know it's still you.
But if a brand new machine from a completely new IP shows up, it's probably you sharing.
They probably also have hotel IP blocks mapped out by now and know the device is at a hotel.
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What kind of maroon watches movies and such on a eensy weeny itsy bitsy fucking phone? Probably why Crave only streams in 320x240 30i with 4 kb/s joint MPEG2 Layer 3 audio.
IP address circles... (Score:1)
To detect sharing, what you could do is look at IP address "circles" and device types.
Certain devices are unlikely to move much - your TV, for example. Most people don't move game consoles that much, I think. If you have a way to detect desktop computer vs laptop. Etc...
The IP where those access the internet is probably your home. More complicated might be if you have a second home or access from work.
Then, you check on whether mobile devices hit the home network regularly.
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Is this not about the sharing of passwords among friends & family & not devices? My son lives 150 miles away & shares our Netflix account. He is likely using the Amazon Prime also, I don't actually know.
This link is to a previous Slashdot posting where they are describing what my family is doing. If they "crack down on it" I really could care less. My son can go ahead & get his own account. Big deal.
Requires being clever. I wrote the algorithm (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote what was once the most-used software for handling the password-sharing and password-stealing problem, which was used on hundreds of thousands of web sites.
It's's not an extremely easy problem, and yet there are things you can do. Clever people can come up with a number of clever indicators. Each of these indicators changes the probability of illegitimate use and the probabilities can be combined using something called Bayes thereom. The magic of Bayes is that you don't need the indicators to be anywhere near perfect; a dozen weak indicators can combine to give a strong result.
In this case Netflix has a harder time than most because you're explicitly allowed to share your account within your entire household. They aren't trying to detect one account login being used by multiple people, like a bank would. (You don't generally have your kids and your brother logging in to your bank account).
As you may know, Netflix has profiles under each account, where each family member can save their profile. They also have the data about what people watch, meaning if "Dave" likes to watch Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, and Ryan's Toy Reviews, and "Dave" also watches Game of Thrones and Lucifer, "Dave" is two people.
Netflix can distinguish between wifi/home networks vs mobile networks. They can distinguish between different mobile networks, and to some extent the same mobile network being used in different geographic areas.
If "Bob" typically watches from a DSL line in Oregon, and has never been to Texas, while other members of his "household" almost always connect via a cable modem is Dallas, they probably aren't in the same house. More generally, if either two profiles or two devices are never used used in the same location, it's probably not the same household.
If two or three different TVs watch Game of Thrones every week, that would be unusual for the same household. Do you stream the same show on three TVs simultaneously at your house?
You can even start looking more at the devices. If three Apple devices are regularly used on a Comcast IP, while and Android and a PC always use a Spectrum internet connection, they might not be in the same house.
Again none of the indicators has to be perfect. It's like recognizing a family member in the store when you see them from the back. You see someone who is tall like your wife - but lots of people are tall. The person has a nice butt like your wife - lots of people have nice butts. The person is wearing a black jacket - lots of people have black jackets. None of the things you see is a reliable way to identify your wife, but put them all together and you have no problem recognizing your wife from behind.
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False. This could be my profile, except for being named Dave. It doesn't mean you're two people, it means you're one person who sometimes lets your kid watch a show they want to without switching profiles.
Are you are that your kid isn't you? (Score:3)
> . It doesn't mean you're two people, it means you're one person who sometimes lets your kid watch a show they want to without switching profiles.
Are you are that you and your kid are two different people?
* aware that. And sorry, that was rude (Score:2)
I meant to ask:
Are you aware that you and your kid are two different people?
But that wasn't a very nice way for me to say it. Sorry about that.
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None of the things you see is a reliable way to identify your wife, but put them all together and you have no problem recognizing your wife from behind.
That's interesting. I can only recognize your wife from behind.
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"If two or three different TVs watch Game of Thrones every week, that would be unusual for the same household. Do you stream the same show on three TVs simultaneously at your house?"
Yes. I might watch it on the Home Theatre in the living room. The Wife might like to watch it on the TV in the bedroom. Fred may also like to watch it on the TV in the bathroom while he is "entertaining" himself. The prostitute that comes over on Fridays likes to watch on the fridge while getting fucked. The mistress watche
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Your analogy of recognizing your wife from behind is also apt if we look at false positives:
If I grab that ass, and it ain't my wife, ALL HELL IS GOING TO COME CRASHING DOWN ON ME.
Similarly, banning customer accounts that are reasonable one-household use is likely to piss off customers (who have alternatives now) and trigger a loss of customers. Going from growth to a teensy drop in customers will drop Netflix's stock price. And investors... well, as far as CEO Reed Hastings is concerned, ALL HELL IS GOING
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Once upon a time, I was standing by and next to my wife in line. She reached back and grabbed my crotch. The dude next to me sure was surprised when some random lady grabbed his dick!
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Machine learning could also play a role. For example, they may notice that certain devices at different geographic locations like a different mix of genres or watch the same popular show repeatedly and again force a password reset. There are any number of possible mixes of identification a
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"If they crack down, it will be for simultaneous streaming on more than a reasonable number of devices. Their crack down will probably to force a password reset email with a validation that you cannot use an old password."
They will have to start being able to send e-mail to do this. They currently use a third-party that is widely blacklisted for being a dirty spammer.
Speculation... (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole article is 100% wild-ass speculation. Netflix gave zero indication they were looking to "crack down" on anything, other than a vague, hand-wavey comment about how they would "monitor the situation"
However, Neumann noted that Netflix has “no big plans to announce at this time in terms of doing something different” with how password sharing works. Therefore, it’s unclear what changes Netflix might make to password sharing in the future.
Re:Speculation... (Score:4, Insightful)
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"but they are probably well aware that there doesn't need to be many false positives before the negative reaction outweighs any potential gain and have chosen to ignore the issue"
NetFlix does not give two shits about negative reaction. Their attitude is that if you don't like it, fuck off and go elsewhere.
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Netflix already charges by the stream, If you want to share with a family member you need to upgrade and pay more to get additional streams. While they are doing it that way there really isn't any need to care who they are sharing with.
One household, several devices (Score:2)
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indeed, the comparison to playstation makes no sense because it is something totally different.
netflix is and can be consumed anywhere at any time on any device, limiting the streams to a device makes no sense.
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I'm guessing from my own experience but a lot are probably parents sharing with kids that are just starting out or in college. It's not like they don't come home on the week end to eat and do their laundry too.
Netflix charges by the stream and if it's not communal viewing then you need to upgrade and pay more any way.
Please do! (Score:2)
Slit your throat to profitability.
It's amazing, Netflix has 5 years max, and the dinosaurs are going to bury it. It's just too cheap to make your own streaming service, amazon lowered the bar.
they could... (Score:2)
No complaints from me, if I could port my profile (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually wouldn't mind paying for my own Netflix account. I feel that I get enough value out of it to justify the small monthly expense. But, I started using my parents' account when I was in college, and now that's where my profile lives. If I could port my entire viewing and rating history to a new account, I would.
$5-$10/mo per device like the cable co! (Score:2)
$5-$10/mo per device like the cable co!
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$5-$10/mo per device like the cable co!
Then you will get devices that allow multiple devices to connect to it across the internet and you technically only have one device connected to Netflix- but it is passing out signals to all your other devices.
Hulu already does this (Score:2)
NetFlix first need ability to transfer "My List" (Score:2)
If NetFlix ever do decide to curtail account sharing then I hope they will first ensure they have smooth functionality for transferring a sub-account's "My List" to another account. A sub-account here is what you click on the "Who's Watching?" post sign-in screen.
I share my account with friends and if they did get their own they'd need to spend hours setting up their "My List" again. This also applies to any tracking of shows watched (so that it alerts you to new episodes, remembers which episode you'd
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I currently share but would have gotten my own Netflix account by now were it not for the prospect of losing all my watch history. I'm hoping a Netflix programmer / exec reads this; some of us aren't freeloading because we're cheap, we just don't want to have to start over training the algorithm or be flooded with recommendations for stuff we've already seen!
If they are going to "fix" anything.... (Score:2)
I realize that there are ways to circumvent even this for the determined, but I am not currently convinced it would be a bigger problem than media piracy itself.
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Practically, limiting licensing to geographical regions by IP address probably wouldn't help their case any more than imposing the same limits on the geographical region of the subscriber billing address, since many people will just torrent or else use a VPN while travelling to access the same content.
So they could still base it on geographical regions like they appear to want to, but they could do it based on the geographical region of the billing address, not the IP address... which is both fairly easy
Capitalism my ass (Score:2)
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Wut? Why would they? You mention bread, meat, and vegetables. Supermarkets don't price their offerings so they're so cheap you won't bother stealing. There are just consequences for stealing.
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They already limit simultaneous streams (Score:2)
Netflix already limits the number of simultaneous streams. It isn't like I can give my account details to my 20 best friends if I am paying for 2 simultaneous streams. We would constantly be fighting over whose turn it is to watch. If I increase it to 4 simultaneous streams (the max I think), then I am guessing 20 people in different locations would still be colliding. Depending on watching habits a 4 stream account might be shared among 6-8 people. At best they might have one more account, if those pe
Translation Time (Score:3)
"Netflix May Crack Down On Password Sharing"
TRANSLATION:
"Netflix Has Bold New Plan To Lose 50% Of Existing Customers"
"consumer-friendly" (Score:2)
The existing setup is "consumer-friendly". Any change that restricts it is not. That doesn't mean they don't have justification, and I see their reasoning, but don't try to pretend that what you're doing is for the good of your customers.
It's stupidly simple to do (Score:2)
It's amazing how slashdot has turned into a gang;e of morons.
Doing what Netflix said is a trivial problem to solve. They know your service address and your IPs.
And no matter how much you whine, you won't cancel your subscription, because you know you're gaming Netflix by sharing your password. Or leave, who cares. It's one less money-losing customer for Netflix.
It may, but won't (Score:2)
As new better ways to circumvent policies would pop quickly up harming the business.
Copy Profile (Score:1)
If I could copy my profile to a new account, I would pay for my own.
Resell Netflix streaming (Score:2)
If Netflix isn't going to really crack down on password sharing, some startup should create a service that facilitates sharing of passwords. That is, a million users share their password with the startup, and the startup gives them a different password. When the user wants to watch Netflix, he uses some app/dongle to transparently grab one of the million Netflix passwords in the startup's pool. This allows all users to downgrade to the cheapest Netflix option. Rationing passwords during peak usage is th
What "consumer-friendly ways" might those be? (Score:2)
Mayhaps via "group pricing"?
Group pricing can be done in a way that reveals customers' close-in extended social networks to Netflix, which could then be used to jumpstart a native social sharing experience.