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upstart writes:

Starting now, anyone borrowing a Netflix login in the U.S. will have to get their own account or pay $7.99 a month:

After nearly a year of warnings and testing, Netflix has finally launched its password-sharing crackdown in the United States.

Anyone sharing their Netflix account login with family members or friends who don't live at the same address will be asked to pay an extra $7.99 a month for each additional person. The company started sending out emails Tuesday to people it determined are breaking the rules, and will continue to roll them out to primary account holders in the coming days. The people borrowing the login will get an update when they try to log in that tells them how to start their own account.

People who are using an account on the go will need to login from the primarily address once every 31 days to avoid being flagged.

[...] Netflix has said that 100 million people around the world use its subscription streaming service without paying for their own accounts. It started testing this crackdown on password sharing last year in other countries, but has long said it would eventually come to the U.S., where the company was founded in 1997.

[...] While the company policies have always said accounts were meant to be shared by households, it publicly embraced the practice in the past. In 2017, the official Netflix account tweeted "Love is sharing a password." And at CES in 2016, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings said the company "loved" that people share Netflix accounts and described it as "a positive thing, not a negative thing," according to CNET.

Streaming companies have been tweaking their businesses over the past year as they struggle with increasing competition and the reality that people can only afford so many monthly subscription fees. Many have raised prices, including Prime Video, Netflix and Apple TV Plus, but no other company has gone after account sharing in the same way.

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