Netflix announces new, more expensive password sharing rules after scrapping previous attempt

Uh oh. If you thought you were safe from Netflix’s password sharing fees, think again - the streaming giant has now extended the crackdown to even more countries.

This whole password sharing crackdown has become very confusing, very fast. In case you were blissfully unaware, last year, Netflix first rolled out fees for account sharing in a number of countries in South America - anyone who attempted to use a Netflix account outside of the account holder’s household needed to be added as a paid “extra member” (albeit at a cheaper price than a regular subscription).

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Of course, this was just the beginning. The company revealed that it was going to roll out paid sharing “more broadly” by late Q1 2023 (by March, basically). Therefore, it came as no shock when these rules were recently posted online, seemingly confirming that the days of password sharing were over. Netflix then did a u-turn and stated that it’d posted them by mistake. Oops.

Coming back to today though, and they’ve returned - at least, for users in certain countries. As reported by the BBC, users in Spain, Canada, Portugal and New Zealand will now have to set a “primary location” for their account and then pay extra for anyone living outside of this location to use the account.

In a blog post, Netflix revealed that up to two extra members can be added to any account, and for each additional person, it’ll cost €5.99 in Spain, €3.99 in Portugal, CAD$7.99 in Canada, and NZD$7.99 in New Zealand. Depending on the country, that’s pretty expensive - in Spain, it’s the equivalent of £5.31/$6.44. As Forbes writes, in South America, the fee per person was the equivalent of about $3 (around £2.47), so it’s a big difference.

Netflix hasn’t announced when exactly it plans to introduce these rules to the rest of the world, but assuming that it’s still aiming for that March target, it could be very soon.