Netflix Unveils Plans To Prevent Password Sharing (ign.com) 150
Netflix has unveiled its plans to prevent password sharing between people in households outside of an account owner's primary location. From a report: As reported by gHacks, the streaming service has detailed how it aims to crackdown on account sharing in an updated FAQ. The information varies between countries, but it looks like the company will be paying careful attention to the devices used to log in to accounts from now on. The FAQ pages for US and UK subscribers currently highlight that devices may require verification if they are not associated with the Netflix household or if they attempt to access an account outside the subscriber's primary location for an extended period of time.
The FAQ pages for countries where Netflix is testing extra membership fees for account sharing have tweaked the rules. The Costa Rican Help Center states that devices must connect to the Wi-Fi at the primary location and watch something on Netflix "at least once every 31 days." The company will use information "such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity" to determine whether a device signed into an account is connected to the primary location. A device may be blocked from watching Netflix if it's deemed to fall outside of the household. As further set out in the guidelines, if you are the primary account owner and you find yourself travelling between locations, you can request a temporary code to access Netflix for seven consecutive days. Alternatively, you can update your primary location if it has changed.
The FAQ pages for countries where Netflix is testing extra membership fees for account sharing have tweaked the rules. The Costa Rican Help Center states that devices must connect to the Wi-Fi at the primary location and watch something on Netflix "at least once every 31 days." The company will use information "such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity" to determine whether a device signed into an account is connected to the primary location. A device may be blocked from watching Netflix if it's deemed to fall outside of the household. As further set out in the guidelines, if you are the primary account owner and you find yourself travelling between locations, you can request a temporary code to access Netflix for seven consecutive days. Alternatively, you can update your primary location if it has changed.
What about region-surfing using VPNs? (Score:2)
A lot of people use VPNs to see content from other Netflix regions - will this still be supported, or will it become a headache now?
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It was never supported, and likely will be more of a headache than it was now.
As far as netflix is concerned breaking vpns would be a benefit as netflix's content licensing agreements requirement to restrict what content a user can see if that user is in a particular region.
Netflix itself doesn't really care for its own sake, but the idiots licensing region limited content to netflix see VPNs as "theft" or something.
(Although to be fair, the world of licensing is a fragmented MESS, if I hold the global lice
Re: What about region-surfing using VPNs? (Score:2)
Netflix doesn't benefit from blocking VPNs. Why would they want to have to make a purchase for every region?
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It's based on licensing rights. Netflix may have purchased the licensing rights for a show in the US, but the same show may be licensed to another network in France. Anyone in France is expected to view it through the licensed streamer in France, not circumvent region locks by using a VPN to watch it in the US.
Why? The owner of the show wants to shop around the content to get the most money possible. Sometimes a blanket international agreement is easier, sometimes the effort of shopping around different
Re:What about region-surfing using VPNs? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was never supported, and likely will be more of a headache than it was now.
I consider it part of the "value" of the subscription to be able to do that, even if not officially "sanctioned". It going away will make it less compelling to subscribe to.
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This isn't a case of "not officially sanctioned". Netflix has actively been playing Whack-a-mole with VPN providers for ages. This practice was being cracked down on long before password sharing even became a topic of discussion.
The fact it's worked for you is great, but to consider it as any part of the value of the subscription is like saying you "value" your car's ability to kill other people when you are involved in a collision.
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And to clarify my analogy, what I mean by that is you can buy some cars that are more dangerous to others, but all car manufacturers are taking steps to make vehicles safer regardless of what you ultimately purchase.
(Don't take it the wrong way, I didn't mean you value killing others :-/ )
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A lot of people use VPNs to see content from other Netflix regions - will this still be supported, or will it become a headache now?
Supported? You're talking about something that Netflix has been cracking down on for years.
Re: What about region-surfing using VPNs? (Score:2)
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it was never "supported" in the first place
True, but it was never explicitly disallowed either - it's been part of the "value" for a Netflix subscription. If that "value" goes away because of this, that makes it even less compelling to use.
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True, but it was never explicitly disallowed either - it's been part of the "value" for a Netflix subscription.
From the Netflix terms of service:
and
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Exactly, not officially sanctioned, but not disallowed by technical means (as yet) either.
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Re: What about region-surfing using VPNs? (Score:2)
Some other things that are not officially allowed, but have no technical means to stop you: kidnapping, murder, assault, and drug-dealing.
Privacy nightmare (Score:4, Informative)
They're basically saying, they'll scan your local WiFi/network for devices, collect your internal and external IP addresses, store and compare WiFi configurations and force you to use the app at home once every month (forcing up engagement) just so they can perform the spyware scan. And if you don't comply, or their stochastic classifier (AI) believes you are lying you get charged extra.
I don't have Netflix anymore, but this would be a very good reason to bail from the service and uninstall their spyware apps if you're still paying for it.
Re:Privacy nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)
They're checking your external IP address (fine with me) but also allowing you use your laptop/tablet/whatever elsewhere if you've used it to watch content from home within the last month. Which sounds pretty reasonable to me. They could just lock your account to your home network.
This means my kids can keep using my account on their tablets when they're at their mother's house. I've been wondering if that complies with their TOS, but it sounds like they're specifically allowing that use case.
Only downside would be if I was travelling for more than 30 days, and they've made a workaround for that specific situation. The only reason I can see to complain about this is if you're deliberately using someone else's account.
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Definition of household sucks. My kids are my kids when they are at college, they depend on me for healthcare, tuition, living expenses. They are part of my household wherever they are at least until they finish college.
If netflix don't like that I suppose they could try charging me a little extra, but more than a couple of bucks a month and that's the end of it - bubye NF.
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My kids are my kids when they are at college, they depend on me for healthcare, tuition, living expenses. They are part of my household wherever they are at least until they finish college.
That's not how households work. But that's beside the point since Netflix has taken that into account with the verification process. If your kids have used the device at home it'll be verified to your household and may periodically require a pin to keep using.
If your kids are never at home, then you should consider the definition of household. You know: "a house and it's occupants." Someone isn't really part of your household if they spend 9 months of the year living somewhere else.
But you can always add
Re: Privacy nightmare (Score:2)
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> The only reason I can see to complain about this is if you're deliberately using someone else's account.
If that's the only reason you can think of, you need to try harder.
My wife needs a medical treatment every two weeks so we have a small apartment in the city for her to use for the couple of days she's there. She's using Netflix on an inexpensive Roku TV which we're not about to lug back to our house once a month just because Netflix has a bug up their ass.
Not to mention there are countless people w
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If you're on an IPv6 carrier, internal IP = external IP. They also need to verify you're on the same WiFi according to the summary/article, which implies some form of being local and scanning for other devices on the network.
Re: Privacy nightmare (Score:2)
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They're basically saying, they'll scan your local WiFi/network for devices, collect your internal and external IP addresses, store and compare WiFi configurations and force you to use the app at home once every month (forcing up engagement) just so they can perform the spyware scan. And if you don't comply, or their stochastic classifier (AI) believes you are lying you get charged extra.
I don't have Netflix anymore, but this would be a very good reason to bail from the service and uninstall their spyware apps if you're still paying for it.
Huh?
They don't care about your local network. When you log in it sends the device id and Netflix, just like every other website, sees the IP you're coming from, and that's what they consider "home".
I don't think there's many people with home network setups where they've got two different external IPs (and in that case they can just put both devices on the same router).
The thing about this that annoys me is that when we visit my mother on the weekend we'll often watch something using my account. My mother do
Re: Privacy nightmare (Score:2)
It seems to imply 30 days not at home is fine.
Re:Privacy nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
simply adding a simultaneous use filter.
does not really work.
I don't have netflix streaming but hypothetically, I would not be able to watch something on my laptop in the hotel while traveling if my wife lights up a stream at home? Does not see practical or fair either.
Honestly I don't know why they don't just stick with their old model of you get N streams at a time on your account regardless of device/location. Just set the prices such that 2 streams at a time is only very slightly cheaper than two 1 at time accounts, and 3 at time is only very slightly cheaper than a two at a time account plus a one at a time account etc. That will leave little or no incentive for people to share outside their 'household' and as you suggest does not require any complex logic just counting simultaneous sessions, and it won't trip any legitimate users up like you no matter what the corner case is.
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simply adding a simultaneous use filter.
does not really work.
I don't have netflix streaming but hypothetically, I would not be able to watch something on my laptop in the hotel while traveling if my wife lights up a stream at home?
Well you only do it if both of those locations are fairly static. Two different fairly persistent IPs often watching at the same time, you won't get too many false positives.
Just set the prices such that 2 streams at a time is only very slightly cheaper than two 1 at time accounts, and 3 at time is only very slightly cheaper than a two at a time account plus a one at a time account etc. That will leave little or no incentive for people to share outside their 'household' and as you suggest does not require any complex logic just counting simultaneous sessions, and it won't trip any legitimate users up like you no matter what the corner case is.
I think the issue there is that it's less simple for the user. For instance, I have a household of 2 and 4 different devices that we may watch on. It's pretty unlikely we'll both watch a device at the same time... but it's possible and annoying if one of us got locked out because of it. Now take a family of 4 where you might have 2 or 3
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But you will get false positives for anyone with a second home. In England alone, that is 873,000 second homes out of a total of 25 million households So about 3.5% of potential subscribers and one might reasonably argue that second homeowners are more likely to have a Netflix subscription. Let's say 5%. I am pretty sure that pissing off 5% of your customers is a not going to be good for business.
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Honestly I don't know why they don't just stick with their old model of you get N streams at a time on your account regardless of device/location.
Because it didn't stop account sharing at the time either and that also affects Netflix's bottom line. People are more than happy to put up with a temporary inconvenience if it means saving a buck or two.
Re: Privacy nightmare (Score:2)
That is already the case the lower end subscription gets 1, the slightly more expensive 2 simultaneous streams, the higher end 4 or even 8. People were buying their $45/month package and typically sharing it with perhaps 1 or 2 other family members (thatâ(TM)s about all you can do before people start complaining). Now Netflix wants them to individually buy the $15 package but likely one will, the rest wonâ(TM)t.
Re: Privacy nightmare (Score:2)
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> They could have handled that and much of the
> inevitable trouble with "travelling between locations"
> by simply adding a simultaneous use filter. If the two
> different locations aren't being used at the same time
> then it's still the same user!
Netflix already sells their plans with $x number of simultaneous streams per plan, with higher-priced plans including more simultaneous streams and more devices allowed to download content for offline viewing. That was the proper place to handle acco
Re: Privacy nightmare (Score:2)
Most ISP now have IPv6, each device definitely gets different their own public IP on my network. The only thing that would bind them together is the same WiFi network (and even that depends).
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They already have simultaneous use filters. You can stream up to n screens. And most ISPs these days are on IPv6, which Netflix prefers, so in the default configuration of most ISP routers, your TV likely has a unique public IP address.
They summary/article says: must connect to the Wi-Fi at the primary location. The only way to know whether devices are sharing the same WiFi SSID is by reporting that SSID and probably a bunch of other information (since most consumer SSID is just NETGEAR). To implement, as
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You may be correct. That said, that isn't the way they described their service. They specified the same "wi-fi network" as the primary device.
If they really meant Wi-Fi network, then I predict this is going to cause absolute chaos. Most of my in-home streaming devices are connected by Ethernet, not Wi-Fi. And if they start making me key in a code using that sh*tty Roku remote every 30 days, my Netflix subscription is getting cancelled.
I'm already concerned enough about the headaches of using Netflix from my work laptop while traveling, because I literally never use it for Netflix while at home — only while I'm at some hotel whose TV doesn
Re: Privacy nightmare (Score:3)
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She is legally still in your household, because your address is considered to be her permanent address until she graduates college. Therefore, Netflix has no legal grounds with which to refuse to provide service to her. But if your daughter doesn't come home at least once a month, she'll apparently have to get them to send you a code every 7 days, which you'll have to pass on to her. It's a HUGE pain in the a**, and I'm sure they will lose a LOT of subscribers over it, but there does at least appear to b
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Or just buy a separate account for her. $7 or $10 a month for 7 months of the year is a huge issue?
You could also step yours down by $5 for less streams while she's gone, so it's a $2-5 a month delta?
sorry, not getting blood pressure up on this. It's OK if someone wants to spend their energy on it.
Ultimately, a lot of people are massively abusing netflix, so they have to do something.
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nah, they will compare your public ip with the device id of your tv app / device. they can perform geolocation or see if it's a different ISP. they don't need to scan anything in your lan
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forcing up engagement
If you're not using Netflix once a month from a device that is primarily linked to your account then you probably aren't affected by this as you either don't have a Netflix account, or have simply forgotten to unsubscribe.
I don't have Netflix anymore, but this would be a very good reason to bail from the service and uninstall their spyware apps if you're still paying for it.
Precisely no one will care about this. I mean I may care a bit. I should post a complain on Facebook about it right after I finish clicking on the ad on my screen.
What if you aren't using WiFi? (Score:3)
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And more importantly, COULD I even do that, since the "primary" network at home isn't WiFi?
That's not how network detection works. Even my home wired network has a uniquely identifiable name, devices on wifi also detect that name, and all my devices, even my IoT devices on a separate network, and guests that come to my house and access the guest wifi can identify the network based on external IP.
Don't assume that what you read on a dumb made for consumers media report is the complete technical file of how this was implemented.
Fine, then. (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck you, Reed Hastings.
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They're making the assumption that the only legitimate use of their system is going to be at a fixed location
They literally are not and travelling for work is one of the things they specifically included your scenario in their FAQ.
I have over 450000 Marriot points. 200 days is nothing, no offense. And yet I don't see this having had an impact on me.
Re: Fine, then. (Score:2)
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Do you not return home (and watch netflix) in those 200 days?
So long as you're occasionally "checking in" back at home, then they'll assume you're the same person. If you're literally never twice in the same place, and don't stay anywhere longer than a week, then yes, you're going to struggle. You're also an infinitesimally small percentage of their user base, so amazingly, they may have to make an exception for you (or decline to offer you service).
No, because I go off for three month assignments a lot of the time. I wonder how they'd handle someone like a trucker who literally is in a different place every night?
Effectively making this a location bound service (Score:2)
Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Costa Rican Help Center states that devices must connect to the Wi-Fi at the primary location ...
I checked the Costa Rica FAQ page [netflix.com] and it does actually say this:
Who can use a Netflix account
... To ensure that your devices are associated with your primary location, connect to the Wi-Fi at your primary location, open the Netflix app or website, and watch something at least once every 31 days.
People don't understand "network", "local network" or "household network"?
Except for my cell phone, I connect all my devices to my local 1 GigE LAN via CAT 5e *not* Wi-Fi but, thankfully, I don't live in Costa Rica and don't have Netfilx so don't have to worry about re-connecting my TiVo via Wi-Fi -- whew. /sarcasm
[Dear Netflix, Please stop making people dumber.]
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People don't understand "network", "local network" or "household network"?
Please don't assume that what is communicated to clueless consumers is in any way some kind of technical file prepared by engineering.
[Dear Netflix, Please stop making people dumber.]
Netflix isn't making anything. The communication here is for users. You know... normal people. The kind who before the age of tablets and wifi called their PC cases a "harddrive".
By the way I assume the device you connect to your 1GigE LAN via CAT 5e is not the same device you take with you when you go to some hotel on holiday or for work. God knows I run 10GigE throughout mu
So basically a suicide plan? (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing with these people is always that they think their content is so great and unique that nobody can live without it and must get it from them. Hence cracking down on any form of sharing and effectively making things much lower in value will leave their customers no choice but to comply. Right? Obviously that is not the case and all they will do is make people look elsewhere or do without. And nothing of value will be lost.
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Yep. Same here.
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and the "punch our customers in the nuts" mentality
Who is being punched in the nuts? The customer doing something that was never allowed in the first place? Oooh poor them! People have been getting things for free. They should be thankful it lasted as long as it did.
Also no service sanctions password sharing. So when you're saying you won't be signing up anytime soon, it's not a problem for Netflix as clearly you weren't interested in streaming in the first place. What's the antonym of virtue signalling?
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You just failed "Capitalism 101".
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As usual quite a clueless view of business. The people here affected are those not paying Netflix anything. If 90% of them look elsewhere it is still a net benefit. Basically no one is going to unsubscribe simply because a device verification popup appears for them once, at least no one that wasn't about to drop Netflix anyway.
No one has committed suicide here. Your fantasy where everyone rage quits at the drop of the dime is just that, a fantasy.
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And you failed "Capitalism 101" again.
Netflix will be very successful (Score:3)
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7 days? (Score:2)
What if I go on holidays for longer?
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What if I go on holidays for longer?
If you are going to watch Netflix (or any streaming media) on holiday, why bother being on holiday? On holiday, you should be doing tourist stuff, sitting on the beach, or doing whatever fun stuff you don't do when you are at home or work.
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That said, I agree with your general sentiment.
divorce (Score:4)
If I put my account on my kid's iPad and he uses at my house no problem. But when he spends the next week at his Mom's house then suddenly I'm violating the terms? Fuck you Netflix. Life is complicated, no reason to make it harder. Block my access and I drop you like a hot rock, for good. My son is authorized to use my account in 2 different places on the same device, I don't care what Netflix thinks about that. Once I stop paying it is forever.
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If I put my account on my kid's iPad and he uses at my house no problem. But when he spends the next week at his Mom's house then suddenly I'm violating the terms? Fuck you Netflix.
Literally not how any of this works. Calm the fuck down and try and understand what is going on around you before you freak out. Your kid is fine and no one is violating anything.
Time for the conversation. (Score:3)
"Hi, you're blocking my retiree, low-bandwidth-using, fixed-income mother from using my account. Yes, she's in another household. I'm an infrequent watcher, check your logs, but I do pay for the highest tier of quality. What's that? You won't unblock it? I understand, thank you. Please cancel my account. Hold on? Why's that? Why yes, we can, in fact, forget any of this happened. Have a nice day."
I actually doubt it'll even happen. My situation is exactly as described. Probably won't even bubble up to needing to be addressed.
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What conversation? That someone is using something they aren't paying for? You can add a user for your mother to your account and pay for it. Say thankyou that you've been getting away with something which has been against terms of service for so long as it is, rather than being angry you got caught.
I got a ticket for speeding the other day. How dare that police officer enforce a rule that I knew about and ignored because I thought I could get away with!
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Netflix plans to go out of business (Score:2)
I've been looking for a reason to cancel Netflix for sometime.
IP addresses, hey? (Score:2)
My primary internet access is via Starlink, which uses a block of IPV4 allocated to SpaceX, or one of a block leased from Alphabet/Google.
That "places" me in Sydney.
I live 917 km/570 miles from Sydney.
How does netflix plan to deal with that scenario?
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By using the client to determine distinct networks, not the server.
Rather than bother with geolocating IP addresses and dealing with static/dynamic WAN IP's; you just have the client scan the local network.
There's a million ways to ascertain if you're connecting to the same network - by wireless network characteristics (SSID/Authentication protocols/AP MAC address), scanning devices (keeping a list of MAC addresses on the network and watching if they exist or not) or using GPS data from the android/iPhone a
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Good thing we only watch Netflix via browsers. I knew there's a reason to steer clear of "apps".
Not perfect of course, but I can mitigate what information browsers are allowed to upload. Pihole works wonders, but there are other tools.
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I rarely use my 4k premium plan these days (Score:2)
But I maintain it so my sister-in-law, and an online friend, can occasionally watch their British dramas, or Doctor Who. They live in states different than mine, and if Netflix axes their use, I'm probably either downgrading or cancelling.
I've got Amazon Prime and Hulu, and Samsung TV, etc., and so on. Plus there's Usenet.
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But I maintain it so my sister-in-law, and an online friend, can occasionally watch their British dramas, or Doctor Who. They live in states different than mine, and if Netflix axes their use, I'm probably either downgrading or cancelling.
I've got Amazon Prime and Hulu, and Samsung TV, etc., and so on. Plus there's Usenet.
Even if you downgrade, if either yor in-law or the online friend subscribe that's a plus for netflix. even if the two or three of you move from premium to ad-supported. Even if after all the reshufling netflix end having less money, as long as you remain and one of your "sharers" subscribe, they are better off. Believe you me.
That was the endgame of introducing ad-supported + cracking down on sharing. The idea was to boos total subscriber count by moving sharers to paid plans, even if that meant the main us
Why not just limit number of simultaneous streams? (Score:4, Interesting)
If Alice starts watching on her desktop at work, then leaves it running, goes home, and fires up her laptop and starts streaming, walks away from that, leaving it going because she's ADHD, and starts watching on her phone, but then she wanders into the bedroom and also starts watching on her television set there, that makes four, so the work desktop stops with a "You seem to have switched to watching on other devices, click Resume to start watching here again" dialog box, or some similar mechanism. No accusations of wrongdoing, just a basic timeout-like thing and push this button to start watching again. Alice, being a (more or less) legitimate user, albeit with strange habbits, doesn't notice that the work desktop has timed out until she gets to work again the next day, at which point she clicks Resume, and the stream on the laptop finally stops. That's at home, so again, she doesn't notice, until she gets home. Repeat ad infinitum, and as long as the resume process is quick, Alice the legit user isn't going to hate this too much.
On the other hand, Bob the Abuser, who has shared the password with eleven of his friends, all of whom watch regularly, is going to have to hit Resume every few seconds, basically fighting with his eleven friends for the 3 simultaneous streams that the account provides.
This isn't perfect, but it's probably good enough. Resist the temptation to set the limit too low, because some legit users really do want to watch on more than one device at a time, because people are weird. But a limit of 3 is probably fine for at least 99.95% of legitimate users, which is good enough for a business like Netflix, and will effectively stop the most serious abusers, the ones whose accounts are costing Netflix a disproportionate quantity of resources by streaming way too much content per unit of time.
People who only abuse the service a little bit (e.g., only sharing the password with one additional household, because you feel bad for your one particular friend who is going through a rough time or whatever) will mostly slip through the cracks (especially if they aren't watching constantly), but I'm not sure that's entirely a bad thing; letting cases like that go, stops you from coming across as excessively harsh, which would be bad PR.
(I'm assuming here that sharing the password with a bunch of your friends is against some kind of acceptable use policy that you agreed to when signing up for the service. If not, obviously, fix that first, before reaching for technical solutions.)
Re: Why not just limit number of simultaneous stre (Score:2)
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Suppose the limit on simultaneous connections from the same account is 3.
They used to do this and it literally had no impact. People will happily put up with a minor inconvenience if it means getting something for free. The end result will not change password sharing, we know that because ... it didn't change password sharing.
Why not copy what game consoles do? (Score:2)
Work and Home networks. (Score:2)
So if I have netflix on my work computer and my home computer, but I never take my work computer home it's going to kick me off because that device never connects to my primary network.
It determines this by having the app/web client scan the local network to determine different networks.
My guess is they'll allow you to share your neflix with one other household/network; but crack down when it's three or more. That way they eliminate most false positives, not piss off the people who are halving the price of
Just price per concurrent user (Score:2)
Who care who's watching (for non-commercial purposes)?
I've just logged in at others' houses.
Netflix needs to make it easy to logout. I can't figure out how to do that from my TV (I didn't look very hard, but it should be easy and obvious).
And allow for quick 2FA login to TVs via the phone app.
Simple and easy (no information they aren't already aware of).
I watched their stuff in in 31 days as it is (Score:2)
Oh yeah, I cancelled their shit service years ago.
Translation Time (Score:2)
"Netflix Unveils Plans To Prevent Password Sharing"
TRANSLATION:
"Netflix Unveils Plans To Radically Reduce Revenue"
Netflix is a data company (Score:3)
They have a *lot* of info about this. They probably have a pretty solid estimate of everyone who's ever canceled an account and kept watching just as much. They have a lot of data about what's happened in countries where they've piloted this.
I'm pretty sure they aren't actually taking much of a gamble in terms of how many users will walk vs how many will start paying.
I bet the real gamble is whether or not their competition, particularly Disney and Amazon, will do. If they quickly follow up with the same, Netflix is in a much stronger position.
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Not true. I have it on good authority by the Slashdot peanut gallery that there's an invisible majority that will cancel the subscription the moment they see a device verification popup first appear and that Netflix has just committed corporate suicide. /s
Kids at college/university (Score:2)
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I wonder how Netflix will treat situations where a child or children are away at college using the family's Netflix account. Yes, this is the case with us. We/they aren't going to pay for their own account so we'll see how this goes.
Same here. I'm paying for the premium plan because I've got 4 kids. Some are in college, some could be staying at their mom's house.
Everybody streams on their phone using unlimited data. I used to watch primarily on my train commute.
Expecting that you must use it on home WiFi doesn't match with present day life
As someone that has never shared his account (Score:2)
Screw it, I canceled. I don't need that hassle in my life. I rarely watch the crap, anyways. I actually watched Amazon Prime video more than netflix last year, which was mindboggling even to me.
NetFlix FAQ Lacking Details (Score:2)
I read the NetFlix FAQ on this and it's severely lacking details on how this works. As a networking professional I've got a far from typical network setup at home compared to most people. Multiple SSID's and VLAN's, IPv6 native across all VLAN's and my ISP uses CG-NAT for IPV4. We could have 3 devices that are on different VLAN's in my LAN detect as being in different locations.
I suspect what they'll really do is none of this (Score:2)
But what they'll really do seems much creepier, so they talk about this stuff.
Netflix basically invented the "you might also like" if you go to a different location every goddamn day, but are watching stuff that they predict is you, and regularly watching the same series, in order and such, they can tell very, very accurately that you are you.
However, when someone at another location watches the same shows you do out of sync, and has wildly different tastes in movies, they can tell.
I really, really, really
What ARE you watching on Netflix, anyway? (Score:2)
Maybe it is a tiny bit better when in the US, but outside there is pretty much nothing I would deem worth watching on Netflix anymore. Not even background noise fluff worthy.
I used to binge shows, nowadays I cannot find even a single episode I would want to see.
So, I have no idea what everyone is still watching on Netflix ever since they put their whole catalog into the dumpster and started enforcing geolocâ¦
It has been more than high time to cancel your sub, for years already. Now this on top of
It took 2 hours... (Score:2)
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Netflix app can just use the 'arp' command to get all MAC addresses on the local network and then look up the devices by the MAC adress and Netflix will know how many and what type of devices are connected to your local network, as well as how often. MAC addresses are also unique identifiers.
You put your crappy, insecure TV sets on the same network as your real devices? I also like to live dangerously....
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You have to admit, it is effective.
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Yup. I did the same just today, and for the same reason.
I wonder what percentage of subscribers they end up losing over rocking this boat.
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Anyway, I don't know if it's still the case, but at least back then, Microsoft would happily let pirated versions of Windows run to maintain themselves as the reference OS. What if poor people started to use Linux instead, they might have been thinking?
Given this principle, I think Netflix are stabbing themselves in the back especially since all their stuff is available on torrents for free anyway.
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