Netflix unveils profile transfers amid password-sharing crackdown

As it techniques up its efforts to suppress the popular observe of password sharing, Netflix is unveiling a new aspect that will give users–including these sharing a person else’s password–an quick way to transfer their profiles to new (and presumably legit) accounts.

Announced nowadays in a site article, Netflix’s new “Profile Transfer” tool lets you export all the essential details in your profile–including your “personalized” recommendations, observe list, viewing history, and saved games–to a new account, presumably your very own.

Netflix payments the new Profile Transfer resource as a way of navigating “life modifications,” this kind of as these that occur when “people transfer,” “families expand,” and “relationships conclusion.”

But the attribute also arrives as Netflix, which just acquired strike with two quarters of declining membership numbers, is receiving serious about cracking down on password sharing.

The new “Transfer Profile” solution, which is however rolling out to Netflix members (it hasn’t landed on my very own account yet), can be accessed below your profile menu on the Netflix web page.

To start off the approach, you have to enter your electronic mail handle and make a new password. Netflix will then transfer your tips, viewing heritage, My Listing, configurations, and any saved video games to your individual new account.

Netflix

A backup of your profile, minus game will save, will continue being on the primary account, and the proprietor of the to start with account will get a notification that you are transferring your profile to a new account.

Netflix’s Profile Transfer announcements in no way mentions the password-sharing brouhaha, as a substitute framing the feature as a way to “let your Netflix profile be a continuous in a lifestyle comprehensive of improvements.”

But one particular of the variations that’s coming for Netflix buyers is that the streamer is no lengthier turning a blind eye toward password sharers.

Stung by recently quarterly earnings that detail a regular stream of departing subscribers, Netflix has begun cracking down on password sharing in earnest.

Back again in March, Netflix rolled out the choice for account holders in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru to build lowered-priced “sub accounts” for up to two individuals they really do not reside with.

In July, Netflix followed up the “sub account” resource with an “add a home” characteristic that permits people in five Latin American nations around the world to “buy” additional residences in which they–or somebody else–can share the same Netflix account.

Netflix has not uncovered any repurcussions for password sharing. But we bought a trace of what could be to arrive in a test very last yr, in which the business requested some viewers to enter a verification code despatched to the account holder.