- Netflix users are asked to add email addresses to their individual profiles
- The platform says this will allow separate logins and offer even more personalized recommendations.
- It seems convenient on paper, but users believe it could lead to another major crackdown.
Sharing Netflix accounts today isn’t as easy as it was in the mid-2010s, but now the top streaming service has another crackdown on accounts that’s already bothering people.
A handful of users have noticed a new pop-up in the app that asks each member of a shared account to add individual email addresses to their individual profiles, instead of using the account owner’s email address as the primary one. One of the most jarring parts is that the popup does not disappear unless the request is fulfilled.
This hasn’t rolled out to all Netflix account holders yet, but the company informed Ars Technica that the new login update started on June 15, so we imagine a broader rollout is inevitable. The outlet also stated that this pop-up does not apply to profiles labeled as belonging to children.
Netflix family accounts have always been created on the traditional “one email, one password” basis, allowing you to create up to five profiles to keep watchlists and recommendations separate from those of other members of your family. That’s all about to change, but the question on everyone’s mind is why Netflix has decided to implement another offensive.
As per the details mentioned in the pop-up, this is purely a reason of convenience. Having individual emails assigned to individual profiles on an account means that you won’t have to continue to rely on using the account holder’s email to log in each time. It also means that if you ever need a verification code to sign in to Netflix, you won’t have to search for it in your inbox.
Additionally, the pop-up also says that adding an email address to your profile will make it much easier for you to recover the account when necessary and get personalized content recommendations with more features to come. On paper, it looks like Netflix is adding this requirement to improve the user experience, but subscribers are convinced it’s just another way for the company to monitor user activity.
When Netflix rolled out its crackdown on passwords in 2023, it ended an era of serial account sharing and that’s where the service decided that an account was strictly for one home, the ‘Netflix Home’ in official terms. With its latest move, we believe there is more than meets the eye, as do the vast majority of online users.
Goodbye profiles on Netflix. So shady. Heavens. from r/netflix
In recent weeks, Reddit has seen a swarm of reactions following the first appearances of the pop-up, but the main concern expressed by users is the possibility of this becoming a payment system, charging account holders an additional fee just to add more profiles. “This is killing Netflix for me,” added one user.
Building on Netflix’s past crackdown, the new requirement could also give the streaming giant another way to better distinguish between activity from individual profiles, or even switch them to individual accounts later. But while users have expressed outrage over this, some say they have found a solution.
It seems that creating email aliases has helped some users get past the pop-up without giving Netflix all their information; however, this has only worked for those using Gmail.
One person in particular says that you can modify your Gmail address to create an alias, giving the example that if your email is ‘[email protected]’ you can set ‘[email protected]’. They go into more detail in their Reddit post, while others in the answers who use this solution for other situations confirmed that it works.
As mentioned, this update has not yet reached all Netflix subscribers and is rolling out slowly to begin with, similar to how the platform began its crackdown on passwords. Given Netflix’s history, we’re definitely keeping an eye on this one.
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