Netflix rolls out Profile Transfer to crack down on password sharing

Netflix has announced a new feature dubbed as ‘Profile Transfer’ after months of testing it in various parts of the world. This new feature will enable users to keep their account data such as their viewing history, saved shows, personalised recommendations and My Lists among other things even as they switch to a new profile.

The streaming giant, in a blog post, said that this new feature will roll out to all Netflix users around the world starting today. The company will drop users an email to notify them about the availability of the Profile Transfer feature as soon as it becomes available in their accounts.

Furthermore, Netflix said that to transfer a profile, users will need to go to the ‘Transfer Profile’ upon hovering over their profile icon on the homepage and then follow the instructions on screen. Of course, users will be able to turn off this feature in their account settings any time.

But why this feature?

There are two reasons why Netflix has rolled out this feature. First, as the company explained in its blog, is to make it less awkward to share account with former friends or partners. If you share your Netflix account with a friend, a family member or a partner and at some point, you decide to go your separate ways, it can get a bit awkward to see their names pop up while watching shows and movies on the platform. For times like these, the company has introduced the Profile Transfer feature so that the people can safely migrate to a different profile without losing on Netflix history.

The other reason, of course, is to put an end to the practice of password sharing.

Netflix estimates that over 100 million users in households share their account passwords. This has led to a revenue loss for the company. So, the company earlier this year had said that it will monetise the multi-household sharing later this year. In this scheme of things, Netflix’s Profile Transfer feature will act as a precursor functionality before it forces people sharing passwords to pay up.

As per reports, Netflix as a part of its plans will ask users sharing their account password to pay up additional amount for the same. This is likely to force a lot of users to create their own separate accounts on the platform. Under such circumstances, the company’s newly introduced Profile Transfer feature will help these users to create a fresh account without losing their data.

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