Look, let’s be honest. Passwords sharing is just as endemic to the Netflix experience as canceling your favorite show in two seasons. When the streaming service starts testing ways to limit the practice, it arouses many people who expected communal bills to be taken for granted. And yes, it’s always annoying when a gravy train goes off the rails. But even if it’s not Netflix’s top priority here, it’s better to keep your password to yourself.
The limited test that Netflix introduced this week is basically a form of two-factor verification, the kind you hopefully already have on most of your online accounts. Some users have begun to see the following indication when deciding on a binge: ‘If you do not live with the owner of this account, you will need your own account to continue watching.’ Below that, there is an option to send a code via email or SMS to the account owner, which you can enter to continue viewing.
We’re still learning. We are definitely in the very, very early stage, “said a source familiar with the trial. “The intention is not to enforce, it’s actually to learn how we verify the information so we can balance the scales away from security issues that may arise due to unauthorized sharing.”
Yes, safety issues. And while Netflix’s password flirting is not altruistic at all – not that anyone has read the Terms of Service, but that your account ‘may not be shared with people outside your household’, it’s also true usernames and passwords with even your closest relationships can have troublesome consequences.
“There seems to be a misconception that sharing passwords with known individuals is not dangerous,” said Jake Moore, a cyber security specialist at security firm ESET. “The truth is that we do not have to share passwords, and the addition of multifactor authentication will help to better protect this process.”
OK, but why? What is the real harm if I transfer my password to a cousin or not-so-comfortable acquaintance? It can come in several forms. The most basic is also the most harmless: although you can share your login with just one friend, you can not control with how many people they then share, and with whom people share the people, on and on, like an old Faberge ad. When WIRED senior author Lily Hay Newman checked out the Hulu account she had made herself a few years ago, she found more than 90 devices.
Admittedly, freelancers mainly threaten the coherence of your recommendation lists. This is not the end of the world. However, they may also steal the personal data contained in your profile.
The bigger the problem is that the wider the password circle, the greater the risk you personally take that your password will be compromised. And given how often people reuse passwords on different sites and services, that means your exposure can go far beyond Netflix.
“Because I shared my password with you and you were hacked, the criminal now has my password,” said Steve Ragan, a researcher at Internet infrastructure company Akamai. ‘And if I used that password anywhere else on the internet, the criminal would find it, and they would have access to it too. It spreads. This is a composite issue. ”
The practice of throwing a bunch of usernames and passwords at various services to see which sticks are known as faith-filling, and it has hit the media industry particularly hard over the last few years. Between January 2018 and December 2019, the attacks of faith fillings on video services doubled, according to Akamai research. The media industry as a whole has seen 18 billion attempts on the same piece. When Disney + was launched, thousands of accounts immediately appeared on dark web markets when hackers sniffed out password users. “Short-term, what’s going to stop it is the huge sale of credentials of this kind,” Ragan says.