You Don't Have Much Time Left to Share Hulu Passwords

Well, this sucks.

Bad news: Hulu is pulling a Netflix. The streaming service will soon start blocking users from sharing passwords outside of the account's main household, following in Netflix's "innovative" footsteps, and we know the date the change will go into effect.

It's hardly shocking, of course. Disney, which has announced plans to take over sole control of Hulu by later this year, is also rolling out password sharing restrictions for Disney+. The sharing ban is currently in effect in Canada, but will no doubt be expanding to the south as soon as Disney feels like it. The company is also changing its password policy for ESPN+, but it isn't clear exactly when those rules will be enforced.

When will Hulu stop letting you share passwords?

Your last day to split your monthly Hulu subscription fee with others outside your household (or just be a freeloader) is March 14. As of the time of this writing, that means you only have about a month and a half of password sharing before Hulu starts giving you trouble. Just like Netflix, Hulu will only allow members of "the household" to access the account, meaning, "the collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein."

Disney has also updated the language of the terms of service for Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ to highlight how you cannot "impersonate" an account user, which is a weird way of saying "Don't use their password." The change to the fine print there is as follows: "You agree not to impersonate or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity, including using another person’s username, password or other account information, or another person’s name or likeness, or provide false details for a parent or guardian."

Will you be able to get around Hulu's password sharing restrictions?

It's too soon to say. Per Hulu's terms, it associates "the household" with the devices connected to your personal residence. Likely, it'll implement some sort of delay when you take those devices outside the household, say on a vacation, and will ask you to reconnect to the household internet once every so often for verification. That means you could sign into Hulu on your tablet at someone else's house, then watch at your house for a while before you got cut off again.

Watching via smart TVs could get tricky, though. Netflix associates the household with the main TV of the account holder. If Hulu does the same, you might not be able to get away with watching Hulu on your TV from another location, unless you hook up a separate, portable device to that TV.

Again, this is all speculation until we know exactly how Hulu plans to enforce these rules. Heck, maybe they'll just choose the honor system!