Paulie’s Perspective: The Preposterous Prohibition Of Password Sharing

Password sharing may soon come to an end. 

You know how we all cut our cable cords to save money and started paying $9.99 to $14.99 per month for our streaming services?  Well one of the ways people saved money, which was their initial intent in the first place was to share each other’s passwords.  Well now the streaming platforms are saying that they have had enough. 

In 2019, about 9.1 billion was lost to password sharing, and that is expected to increase to 12.5 billion by the year 2024. Netflix says creating programming is becoming more and more expensive and their subscriber growth has basically flatlined,  so they may begin to counter act that with stopping password sharing. 

The companies also found out that password sharing is a generational thing. Among 13-24 year olds, 64 percent share their password to someone who is not living with them. Among 35 year olds and higher, that number is only 16 percent. 

How do you stop password sharing you ask? Well they can put in place a two step verification process where a code is sent to your phone to continue, or develop a three tier streaming service or put into place some kind of authenticity software with each subscription. 

No one is quite sure yet, but one thing is for certain, the big boys do not like when we share information – and the younger generation seem to be doing it a lot. 

It is Ironic that we all ran to the streaming services to get away from the cable bills that were mounting up rather quickly. Now with Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, Google, AppleTV, Disney+, HBO MAX, ITunes and all their tiers of payments – it looks like cable is looking pretty good these days. 

So now that the big boys are on the trail to stop password sharing – I would say it’s not a question of if, but when. I would hold on to that cable subscription just a little while longer if I were you. Save yourself some re-installation fees. 

Thanks for tuning in every week and find me here every Thurs on PlacetoBeNation.com you can reach me for comments paul.bernardo@me.com