Netflix (sort of) walks back on its password sharing rules
Password sharing has been something Netflix users have been doing for years, but for the most part, Netflix has closed one eye to that practice. It was only last year that the company started to get serious about clamping down on those practices, and just last week, a support document was published that revealed how they would be going around enforcing it.
Unsurprisingly, users were upset with these changes, so much so that Netflix has since kind of walked back on it, claiming that the document had been published by mistake. According to a statement made to The Guardian, Netflix claims that those rules only applied to countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, suggesting that the rules could be different elsewhere.
For those who are learning about this for the first time, basically the document said that to track if users are living in the same household, Netflix will rely on things like the IP address of users watching the service. They also stated that users would need to watch shows using that IP address at least once a month, which presumably is done to ensure that users are still living in that location.
These rules sparked some outrage due to how limiting they felt, especially for users who might be traveling or have multiple devices. It is unclear what the rules will be like for the rest of the world, but at least for now if you don’t live in any of the countries mentioned above, you’re “safe”.
Source: The Guardian