Disney Plus to start banning accounts for password sharing

Uh oh. Disney Plus is set to follow in the footsteps of Netflix and crackdown on password sharing as soon as next month.

Tackling password sharing has been lucrative for Netflix. While many subscribers threatened to cancel their subscriptions entirely, Netflix reported that they’d seen the opposite effect. With many now paying extra to share their password, Netflix’s income has only grown - and now Disney Plus wants in on the action. With Netflix, it’s the bill payers IP address which indicates the account’s home address. If you don’t take the device you use to watch Netflix to the primary account holder’s address once every 30 days, you’re classed as sharing a password and now must pay an extra supplementary fee each month in order to keep on sharing.

Ahsoka has drawn to a close on Disney Plus today. Take a look at the show in action below.

It’s now understood that Disney Plus will begin rolling out a similar system, beginning with account holders in Canada next month. In November, Canadian subscribers will no longer be able to share their account with someone who lives outside of their household, but it’s not known if Disney Plus will use the same metrics and measures of enforcement as Netflix.

MobileSyrup reports that an email was sent to Canadian subscribers earlier this week. "Unless otherwise permitted by your Service Tier, you may not share your subscription outside of your household," the email said. "'Household' means the collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein."

This coincides with Canadian subscribers gaining access to a new cheaper ad-supported tier. It remains to be seen how much password sharing will now cost for Disney Plus subscribers. For Netflix, users may pay a supplementary fee to allow them to continue password sharing, adding another household address to the account. In the UK, this costs £4.99 a month. Whether Disney Plus implements a similar system or requires all households to own their own account is yet to be confirmed. Many, naturally, will be hoping for the more cost-effective former.