Next month, Netflix will roll out new anti-password sharing features in the United States and other territories. Netflix updated its Help Center to reflect the new rules for password sharing earlier this week, but according to Netflix, that update was made in error. Therefore, we still don’t know what the password-sharing rules for US subscribers will look like.
Netflix password-sharing rules aren’t finalized
As noted by The Streamable, the Netflix support page for “Sharing your Netflix account” received a substantial update this week. The support document explained that Netflix accounts could only be shared within one household going forward. Netflix would require users to open the app once every 31 days to ensure their devices were associated with their primary location.
The document also explained that anyone who tries to sign into your account from a new location will be blocked from doing so and will receive a prompt to sign up for their own account. There are also limits to how many devices you can use at your primary location.
This set off a firestorm online, but on Wednesday, all of the updates to the Help Center vanished without a trace. The support page now looks the same as it did last week, without any mention of blocking devices or primary locations. So what happened?
“For a brief time yesterday, a help center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, went live in other countries,” a Netflix spokesperson revealed to The Streamable on Wednesday. “We have since updated it.”
According to The Streamable, the spokesperson added that if and when such significant changes were to be planned for other territories, Netflix would communicate the details of those changes to customers before rolling them out. In other words, there’s no guarantee our rules will end up being the same as the rules in Chile, Costa Rice, and Peru.
