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Netflix to crack down on account sharing next year, will charge accounts for extra users

If you’re kind enough to share your password with your family, friends, even acquaintances, you will want to start weening them off of your account.

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Netflix has been testing various ways to get streaming leeches off accounts and will start cracking down next year.

Starting this week, for people who have a personalized profile on an account that someone else pays for, the tacked-on users can roll over their profile to their own paid account without losing their history and settings, Vanity Fair reported.

Netflix is also going to introduce “sub accounts” for people who do not live in the same house as the main account holder, USA Today reported. Sub accounts will get a login, profile and personalized recommendations.

The plans were announced in a letter to investors this week.

The features will be available next year and will be similar to what Netflix does in Latin America, where subscribers have to pay an extra $2.99 for each additional home that streams Netflix from the main account, USA Today reported.

Netflix estimated earlier this year that about 100 million households used a shared account without paying for the service.

Netflix is also rolling out a lower-cost version of the streaming service that is ad-supported, Forbes reported. Company officials, despite analysts saying that customers may opt for the lower tier, are not worried about “plan switching” and don’t believe many current users will change what they have already, the publication reported.

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