It is not new that the Netflix plans to charge an additional monthly fee for users who share their accounts with people who do not live in the same household — the company has even started testing the application of this charge in some countries.
But how will the company verify whether or not the account is being used at a given address? And in cases of travel, will the person be prevented from accessing the account because they are in another location? These questions were vaguely answered by the streaming service on a help page available in countries where the additional charge has already been activated – such as Costa Rica.
In these countries, each account is associated with a “Netflix Residence” — nothing more than a main house in which the users residing there will have access to the account without hindrance by the service. For a device to be linked to this default location, it must have watched at least one piece of Netflix content on the same home Wi-Fi network in the last 31 days.
This allows access to be maintained even when the user is in the car, at work or at friends’ houses. At least in theory, it also allows users who don’t live in the “Netflix household” to have uninterrupted access to the account, as long as they can make periodic visits to the primary user’s home.
And in case of travel?
If the device used on the trip has gone through the 31-day process before boarding, it will continue to have access until the confirmation cycle needs to be renewed. After that — or even if the person wants access on another device (such as the hotel TV, for example) — it is possible to request an access code to watch the service for another seven days on the unreliable device, as this page informs. company support.
Netflix informs that the number of access codes will be limited (apparently, two codes per device), which means that if the user travels for a long period, his only option to continue having access to the platform’s content with the same account is to change the “Netflix home”. Otherwise, he must sign a new plan.
And what about Brazil?
The same help page on account sharing, in its Brazilian version, also makes it clear that users can only share their data with people who live in the same household, but that while the possibility of adding a residence for an additional cost is not enough here , access to third parties will be made much more lenient.
According to the company, when access is detected from a device not associated with the main user’s residence (probably following the 31-day confirmation criteria) or when the account is accessed regularly from another location, a device verification may be requested for the access is granted.
This verification will happen by sending a link to the email or cell phone linked to the holder’s account, which will contain a four-digit verification code. It will need to be inserted into the requested new device within 15 minutes – which is similar to the method adopted by other streaming services.
Despite making access more difficult compared to the current facilitated login, this method is nothing more than a kind of two-step authentication and — at least in practice — it will also not prevent external users from accessing your account. In that case, they don’t even have to live in the same house or city where the Netflix home is located.
It remains to be seen when…
via Tecnoblog