New Technology Could Potentially Shut Down Netflix Account Sharing

If you and your friends all share a Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, or any other streaming account in order to save some money, things might be getting a little more difficult for you in the years to come.

This week at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, video software provider Synamedia revealed new technology that could help put an end to account sharing. According to The Daily Mail, Synamedia’s AI-powered system is designed to track down and analyze which users are logged in at different locations, quickly being able to flag accounts that are being shared.

Snyamedia learned from research done by Magid that roughly 26 percent of millennials share their personal Netflix credentials, creating a potentially massive loss in revenue. A study from Parks Associates concluded that, by 2021, credentials sharing could account for $9.9 billion in losses for pay-TV revenues and $1.2 billion in OTT revenues.

The Synamedia Credentials Sharing Insight doesn’t just crack down on small-time sharing issues, like a user having the same login as their younger brother in college. It’s more heavily aimed at larger credentials-sharing operations across all streaming service. The system could let the company operating it specify how many users should be able to use a single account, which comes in handy for various family plans. For example, Netflix has a subscription tier that allows one account to be streamed on four different devices at once. A family wouldn’t need to be tracked or reprimanded for using multiple devices or locations under that plan.

What the technology can do is figure out where fraudulent activity is coming from, tracking exactly where accounts are being wrongly used. It can also pinpoint the correct locations and devices that families and users regularly use to determine which ones are “safe.”

“Casual credentials sharing is becoming too expensive to ignore,’ said Jean Marc Racine, CPO of Synamedia. “Our new solution gives operators the ability to take action. Many casual users will be happy to pay an additional fee for a premium, shared service with a greater number of concurrent users. It’s a great way to keep honest people honest while benefiting from an incremental revenue stream.”