Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown hits Canada, but not the US — yet

Netflix is expanding its paid password sharing to subscribers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain starting Wednesday, the company announced in a blog post. The company had already started testing the change — in a few different forms — in some countries in Latin America. Now, Netflix is expanding its efforts ahead of a broader rollout in “the coming months.”

Netflix said that was inadvertent, and now none of the support pages have any details about restrictions on streaming to devices that aren’t on your home network. No matter what country you select, it only says, “A Netflix account is meant to be shared in one household (people who live in the same location as the account owner). People who are not in your household will need to sign up for their own account to watch Netflix.”

The company says that users in the newly added countries will be able to pay more if they want to add access for people they don’t live with. The fee is $7.99 Canadian and Australian dollars (around $5.50 USD), €3.99 in Portugal, or €5.99 in Spain (about $4.28 and $6.43 USD, respectively). The number of people you can add depends on your plan and what country you live in. It’s not an option for the basic and basic with ads tiers, while the standard plan lets you add one outside user, and the premium plan lets you add two. If you want to move your profile from a friend’s account to your own, you can transfer your Netflix profile.

The idea behind Netflix’s new sharing system is that the account holder will set a “primary location” and that people who live there can use the account. People who don’t, however, will either have to get their own accounts or be added as additional users if the plan supports it. The company does say that “Members can still easily watch Netflix on their personal devices or log into a new TV, like at a hotel or holiday rental,” but Wednesday’s announcement doesn’t add much information about how that will work.