Netflix users are furious at the platform’s latest update — now users are required to use separate email addresses for account profiles, but some users think they've found a handy workaround | Tech Radar
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Netflix subscribers are furious at the platform’s latest update — now users are required to use separate email addresses for account profiles, but some think they've found a handy workaround
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Netflix users are being asked to add email addresses to their individual profiles
The platform says this will allow separate sign-ins while offering even more personalized recommendations
It seems convenient on paper, but users think it could lead to another big crackdown
Sharing Netflix accounts today isn’t as easy as it was in the mid-2010s, but now the best streaming service has another account crackdown on the way that’s already getting under people’s skins.
A handful of users have noticed a new in-app pop-up asking each member in 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 about it is that the pop-up doesn’t clear 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 sign-in update began on June 15, so we imagine a wider rollout is inevitable. The outlet also stated that this pop-up doesn’t apply to profiles that are labelled as belonging to children.
Netflix households accounts have always been built on the traditional 'one email, one password’ foundation, allowing you to create up to five profiles to keep watchlists and recommendations separate from other members in your family. That’s all about to change, but why Netflix has decided to roll out yet another crackdown is the question that everyone is asking.
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Additionally, the pop-up also says that adding an email address to your profile will make it a lot easier for you to recover the account when needed, and get personalized content recommendations with more features to come. On paper it sounds like Netflix is adding this requirement as a user experience enhancer, but subscribers are convinced it’s just another way for the company to surveil user activity.
When Netflix rolled out its password crackdown back in 2023, it ended an era of serial account sharing and that’s where the service decided one account was strictly for one household, the ‘Netflix Household’ in official terms. With its latest move, we believe that there’s more than meets the eye — and so do a vast majority of users online.
Bye Bye profiles on Netflix. So shady. Sheesh. from r/netflix
Over the past few 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 morphing into a payment system, charging account holders to fork out extra just to add more profiles. “This is killing Netflix for me”, one user added.
Based on Netflix’s past crackdowns, the new requirement could also give the streaming giant another way to better distinguish between the activity of individual profiles, or even shift them to individual accounts later down the line. But while users have expressed outrage over this, some say they’ve found a workaround.
It appears that creating email aliases has helped some users get past the pop-up without giving Netflix all of their information, however this has only worked for those using Gmail.
One person in particular says that you can amend your Gmail address in order to create an alias, giving the example that if your email is ‘johnsmith@ gmail.com’ you could set up ‘johnsmith+kid 1@gmail.com’. They go into further detail in their Reddit post, while others in the replies who use this workaround for other situations confirmed that it works.
As mentioned, this update hasn’t reached every Netflix subscriber yet and is rolling out slowly to start, similar to how the platform kick-started its password crackdown. Given Netflix’s history, we’re definitely keeping one eye open on this one.
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Rowan is an Editorial Associate and Apprentice Writer for Tech Radar. A recent addition to the news team, he is involved in generating stories for topics that spread across Tech Radar's categories. His interests in audio tech and knowledge in entertainment culture help bring the latest updates in tech news to our readers.
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