Netflix officially kills password sharing in Canada this week

If there are any murder docs, baking shows or foreign-language romance flicks chilling in your (mom’s) Netflix queue that you really, really want to watch, you might be too late as the service has officially disabled password sharing between users in different Canadian households.

Earlier this month, the US streaming giant gave its subscribers in Canada a deadline of Tuesday, February 21, 2023 — yesterday — to set primary locations for their accounts.

Any device that tries to access an account from outside of this authorized location, as determined by factors such as IP address and online activity, will be unable to do so beginning today (with few exceptions), according to Netflix.

In other words, the free ride is over for Canucks who’ve long been leeching off their parents, friends, ex-lovers, siblings, employers, or whoever else hasn’t changed their Netflix password since that one time… unless your gracious benefactor is willing to tack an extra $7.99 per month, per user, onto their bill.

Only the two most-expensive Netflix plans available in Canada currently allow for the addition of an extra user, of which there can only be two: Standard ($16.49 per month) and Premium ($20.99 per month.)

So many people in Canada are cancelling Netflix over its new password sharing rules #Netflix I have a vacation home and multiple devices.If they go through with this attempted cash grab, I’m boycotting too!! No way I’d pay more – there’s other options!!! https://t.co/MfqUSam00s

— Colleen (@oneofcanadasown) February 11, 2023

“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account with features like profiles and multiple streams,” said the California-based tech company’s director of product innovation, Chengyi Long, on February 8 when announcing the long-rumoured crackdown.

“While these have been hugely popular, they’ve also created confusion about when and how you can share Netflix. Today, over 100 million households are sharing accounts — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films.”

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Netflix has not revealed how many accounts in Canada were being used by multiple households before it announced its new “features,” but Canadians don’t seem keen, in general, on changing their ways.

Instead of shelling out extra cash for additional users or telling their loved ones to get their own accounts, many have simply pledged to cancel the service altogether.

It remains to be seen how much this impacts the company’s subscriber base in Canada, but we’ll no doubt see more complaints across the web on Wednesday when the crackdown begins in earnest.