Netflix User Discovers Shocking Loophole in Parental Locks, “Seems Unethical”

Netflix has made cracking down on password sharing a clear priority, with the company aiming to increase memberships when family members can’t use the same account. This also applies to limiting the amount of simultaneous streams in the same household. If you try to watch something on Netflix when too many others are already using the account, you’ll get a pop-up prompt that urges you to upgrade to a more expensive plan, allowing you to keep watching on more screens. We’ve all known that Netflix has been pushing this strategy for a while, but many didn’t know is that these prompts allow kids to bypass parental locks and upgrade the Netflix plans of their parents. They don’t even need a password or card information.

On the r/Netflix subreddit, a user recently posted about this issue and included screenshots of a conversation with a Netflix help representative. According to the user, they received an email from Netflix saying they had upgraded to the $25 per month, 4K streaming plan. That upgrade was made from one of their children, who uses a child’s profile on the Netflix account and is restricted by password-protected parental controls. When the child was given the prompt to upgrade, since too many screens were being used, they were able to simply click a button and change the plan.

Typically, access to any account information is guarded behind a password, especially when it comes to children’s profile. This prompt required no such thing, even though the child was on their own profile and had seemingly no access to the payment information.

As the user wrote in their message to Netflix’s help desk, it seems “unethical and wrong” for Netflix to have such an easy way to bypass the parental controls and let kids spend money. The most frustrating part, however, is that Netflix seems completely content to allow the problem to continue.

“If they have access on the account like the automatically logged in on their device, they will see a prompt for the plan change if the online streaming limit is reached on the account,” the customer service representative wrote in one of their replies. In another, they simply told the user that the parental controls option “doesn’t cover the plan change prompt on the account.”

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This situation obviously doesn’t come up for everybody, as it only occurs if a child were to open up their Netflix profile and try to watch something while the same account is already being used on multiple other screens. But it’s common enough that this isn’t the first time it has happened.

The upgrade work-around has actually been a problem for years and Netflix has failed to address it. In the comments of this user’s post, another Redditor shared a link to a post they made about the same subject two years ago. In that 2023 post, they explained that they called Netflix customer service and were told that there was nothing to be done about the upgrade prompt allowing users to change the subscription. According to the original poster, the Netflix representative explained to them that anyone who can watch on the account is able to upgrade that account if they’re met with the prompt.

The bottom line is that Netflix wants as many subscriptions as possible. That’s all well and good, considering the goal of a tech company is to expand as much as possible in as little time as possible (even if that growth isn’t reasonable or sustainable). Netflix prompting you to upgrade isn’t an issue. But being able to work around parental locks and passwords is a completely different situation.

Hopefully, as this recent post continues to gain traction online and frustrate customers, Netflix will finally work on addressing the problem — but that doesn’t seem likely at this point.