Password policing | Mint

Netflix’s crackdown on password-sharing has reached Indian shores, with the company on Thursday announcing that only members of a household will be able to access a single account. So, those viewing Netflix through the accounts of others will now either have to bear a snap-off or subscribe independently. Going by Netflix’s experience in other markets, it is possible that viewers may choose the latter, having become habituated to the platform after all that free binge-watching. Even though Netflix may not admit any design behind its neglect till now of password-sharing, it does seem to have worked in popularizing it. After its May swoop-in across 100 countries, the platform has added as many as six million subscribers globally. To be sure, in those markets, it devised plans that allowed for such password sharers to be added, but these won’t be on offer in India. That’s because its prices here have already been cut. The company is expected to track online devices to restrict access to those within the same habitation range. Invasive as this may sound, it’s the privacy price that its users must pay for content leakage to stop and for this market to get past its infancy.