Sharing streaming service passwords--good idea or bad idea?
4My sister finally got internet at home, and I want to give her my Hulu password so she can watch Lodge 49 (nothing else, just Lodge 49). I have the half-price Hulu deal from Black Friday, not a fancy plan. Can I get into trouble by doing this, or will it just not work for her if there’s an issue? I still haven’t watched season 2 of Lodge 49, so this is an important question. Thank you for any answers, useful or not.
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It’s against the rules but it’s not like they cared when a bunch of assholes from Croatia were using my account.
@sammydog01 assholes don’t have thumbs…or fingers. How did they access your account then? Did they have the Alexa?
They don’t really seem to care. They give you two streams and let you set up to 6 profiles I think. I’ve been sharing Netflix with my dad for years, never had an issue. You do have to give her your password obviously and in general any password you share should obviously be different than any other passwords. They can’t really hurt anything in your account other than accidentally clicking on your profile instead of theirs and messing up where you were in a show.
Great idea! One of you subscribe to one and the other to another one.
In your case it should be just fine. I loaned my Netflix account to my brother (who lives in a separate household) and I guess him and his roomies weren’t aware of the limit on the number of screens that can be viewed simultaneously…so after a few too many instances of me not being able to watch what I pay for due to my bro and his roomies using several screens at the same time, I told him to get his own account. Heh
@PooltoyWolf that’s why Netflix has a “sign out all devices” option. Go in, change password, then sign everyone out. If they want back in, they have to contact you.
@PooltoyWolf @RiotDemon I wish Amazon did this. You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to kick a friend off of my account. Changing passwords did nothing. I actually had to kill the Roku account associated with his login.
@RiotDemon That’s exactly what I did haha
@Fuzzalini Did you know that Amazon has merchant accounts? You can setup employees that are authorized to buy stuff and add/remove employees as needed. It’s a good feature but I’d never use it myself and I do have a merchant account. I don’t trust any employee to buy business items only and even if they did, they might not shop around for the best price as aggressively as I do.
@cengland0 That’s not an option for the streaming service, which is what I was having issues with.
Once this question is settled, could we revisit the part about your sister finally getting home internet? This intrigues me.
@njfan I didn’t have internet at my house for over a year. It sucked so bad.
@njfan @RiotDemon I’m not sure I’d miss it. My bank account would be a lot healthier.
@Barney @njfan I wouldn’t be able to do it now. At the time I had satellite TV. Now I use the internet for TV.
@njfan @RiotDemon I have this love, hate-hate, relationship with the internet. I think overall that I hate it more than I like it. Yeah… I could live without it.
@Barney @njfan @RiotDemon I am without internet on weekends. I have a phone and a hotspot if I’m desperate. I waste a lot less time on the internet and waste a lot more time doing better stuff.
@Barney Not sure I could, but I can relate.
@ThunderChicken I know it would be next to impossible for younger people, but I’m of a generation that didn’t grow up with it. I KNOW there are other things to do. I just can’t think of them right now.
@Barney @RiotDemon @sammydog01 this is troubling. @sammydog01 is managing fantasy football success w/o weekend internet access? What does that say about the league? More importantly, what does it say about me?!
@njfan @sammydog01 What does it say that she has the same lack of success with or without internet access?
@Barney @njfan I don’t need the internet for fantasy football intel. You just draft Antonio Brown first, right?
@njfan @sammydog01 And that explains it all.
@njfan She’s stubborn to the point of parody, I guess? Or did you want to know what kind of a deal she got?
Profiles will keep your shows straight. If you’re both watching the same show you won’t even notice where the other is as long as you stick to your profile.
I think Hulu has a 2 or 3 screen limit so keep that in mind if you have family in our house or theirs watching simultaneously
@RedHot Yes, profiles are important. My gf lives in a large household and is all the time finding the series she wants to stream is not where she left off. She needs to insist that the others create and use their own profiles.
It’s fine. I have shared my Netflix, Hulu, I have someone else’s HBO Now and VUDU. The alternative is that I pay that one guy at work who pirates everything and has a Plex server so, at least this way they get some money for each service I use.
@j37hr0 the sharing economy!
If you have Hulu w/o ads, please feel free to share with me.
@njfan I got the $1.99 for 12 months promo they did a while back. Has ads.
@j37hr0 you pay, $2 for 12 months?! That’s sweet!
@njfan $1.99 a month for 12 months. Still a good deal, but not as good as that would be.
Going to need a hulu subscriber for a definitive answer, but, implications depend on what the hulu plan you have includes.
On most streaming, plans include a certain number of screens, that’s how many you can have going at once. If your plan includes 2 or more, and it’s only you and her, shouldn’t be a problem. If it only includes 1, she’d only be able to watch when you aren’t.
They aren’t going to just block or cancel you, because she could be part of your household, and out of town on a trip or something. People stream when on vacation, in hotels etc all the time.
@kevinrs Yeah. I managed an AirBnB with a Roku TV in guest mode; visitors could sign in with their own streaming accounts. Never heard of any problems.
They’re pulling in money hand over fist. Don’t feel bad at all. Like others have said, the only way they care is when you have a ridiculous amount of people streaming which they’ve mitigated over the last couple of years by limiting the number of screens at once.
The only horror stories that I’ve heard about this is if you use the same password for other things and you can’t trust the individual. Other peeves would be if they use it for other shows, then it influences what shows up on your recommended lists. That was solved in Netflix with user profiles; I don’t know if Hulu has users cuz Hulu is my wife’s in my family. Also if you’re watching the same show and you have to stop early and then they start watching the same episode, you’ll lose your place.
I’m sure there’s other things but the bottom line is if both of you are responsible, mature, and respectful adults about it, it’ll be fine.
One of the problems with devices tied to some unrelated function (like purchasing stuff) and I’m looking at you, Amazon (and Google) is that the security risks and purposes are entirely different.
Just because I want to let a device access my content doesn’t mean I want to allow that device to also have access to the rest of my information or to my payment information - even to use it. Like your nephews/nieces buying movies/shows on your account.
It is a pain to setup devices with their own accounts, but if you ever want to sell that device or worse, the device gets stolen, you should do that. It also means you can’t share your library/content/apps, unfortunately.
And my biggest peeve - a password to use your account should not be the password (or thing) to control your account.
The “email a link to change your password” is a start, but that should also apply to: viewing payment info, changing payment info, viewing profile info, changing payment info, and absolutely to changing your password or any other security feature (disabling text notices, disabling 2-factor, changing emergency access, unsubscribing from services, closing your account, downloading all of your data (per GDPR), getting one-time use passwords, authorizing and deauthorizing devices and linked accounts (pay-with-points, login-with-facebook-or-google, etc), setting up backup/security accounts, email forwarding or automatic actions.
If someone knows your password, they can do everything you can do with it. Changing it means they only know what your password used to be, and that makes it useless to them and risk-free to you.
Use a password manager.
Use 2-factor authentication everywhere you can.
Devices get lost and stolen. Including the ones you’ve let people share your account with. Don’t let them be a gateway to steal even more from you.
I will say that a problem with 2-factor (i.e. your phone in some way) is that how do you recover if the device is lost/stolen/broken or if you are no longer around to unlock/use your phone, and your survivors/loved ones/executor has to use it to access your accounts. (ProTip: Leave them clear written instructions that you actually test yourself to make sure they work because you wont be around to tell them how to do it).
Securely backing up those QR seed codes used to setup Authy, MS, Google, “<whatever> Authenticator” is a real problem with some of them. And the device failure/replacement procedures aren’t/haven’t been worked out or really tested.
Don’t use any passwords you share on any other accounts!
If you do share your password, change it after they’ve setup their device.
Better, change it to something just before you give them the password and then change it back if you have a pet password you’ve memorized or have in your muscle-memory from typing it.
Even better, use a pasword manager like BitWarden, LastPass, Dashlane, 1Password. And change it afterwards.
@mike808
^this!
Well, you’ve all convinced me it’s probably safe to give my sister my Hulu password and possibly my Amazon password. Worth the experiment for sure. Thanks!
@mossygreen
Do you live near her?
I have no knowledge about Hulu practices
Regarding Amazon if she only wants to watch on certain devices then if you live near you don’t need to give her your password.
You can just go over to her house and set the devices up on your account yourself and enter the password and all that do all the set up.
And then she can watch as she pleases on those devices even if you change your password the fact that the devices were authorized means they’ll stay authorized or at least that’s been my experience.
Of course if you trust her then you may be want to go ahead and give her the password
You can still protect a lot of purchasing activity on your Amazon account by setting up two factor authentication which will apply to many activities on the account but not all of them
@f00l She’s about three hours away. I feel like I live near her when I look at weather maps, but we never actually get together. Anyway, she’s far more trustworthy than I am, and I could give her all of my passwords without concern.
@mossygreen
I’m glad she is so honest and reliable.
However, consider her household situation also.
Do other people live there or come there? Does she keep this sort of into super-secure, always, without fail or exception?
Bear in mind: that if she knows your amazon password, she can access your purchase history, and also your amazon browsing history to some degree.
And she can buy some stuff (particularly digital instant purchase material) on your account using your default payment method.
More risk:
Possibly, so can other members of her household (who don’t know the password).
From within the media apps.
I believe that users of the amazon audible app, music app, and kindle app (or kindle e-reader devices) can purchase content by using the app or device, without entering the password.
This might also be true for amazon video and gaming apps.
This means that not only she, but also other members of her household (such as children), and also household visitors using an authorized device, can purchase (on your account, using your payment method):
audiobooks, e-books, and music, simply by opening the authorized-on-your-account Audible, kindle, or amazon music app or kindle device.
!!! Without Knowing Or Entering A Password !!!
There may be some security settings to prevent this. I haven’t seen them
Perhaps the same vulnerability is true of amazon digital video. I don’t use it enough to know.
Amazon wants people to purchase now and possibly repent later. They do this deliberately.
I consider this is he a significant risk.
It really might be better to follow the concerns @Mike808 articulates below:
Change your amazon password to something temporary that you can remember.
Tell her that temp password. Let her authorize any viewing device she wishes to authorize within the limits of your services.
Then change the password back.
She can watch content. only you know your password.
This prob will not prevent purchases from within the amazon media app tho.
So I guess, my take:
if she lives with anyone not as fully mature and as utterly trustworthy as she is, I would not share my amazon account perks with her.
Amazon’s system is really poorly setup for sharing. That’s prob somewhat deliberate in Amazon’s part. They don’t want you to share.
Encrypted password lockers, also as enumerated below by @mike808, are also an excellent practice.
Also keep both your temp and permanent amazon passwords unique to amazon.
Sharing accounts from Hulu or Disney+ or Netflix and the like is prob far less risky. Less chance of user purchases.
Beyond the subscription, I think, little is available on these services to purchase?
However, these services might check ip’s, and ip location patterns, and conclude that you are sharing with someone who lives elsewhere. This is prob not allowed in the TOC. You might have probs w your account in the long run.
Anyway, make sure each account has a unique password.
And if you use a “password pattern” of some sort, use one “password pattern” for the shared passwords, and a different “password pattern” for the rest of your digital life.
None of this is sufficient to keep your accounts truly safe. It’s a start.
But our current consumer digital security practices are not built for real safety amd security.
They are built for corporate advantage, and for ease of use by the customer (to encourage instant purchasing).
@f00l @mossygreen
Echoing what @f00l said. The situation with Amazon is not unique. It is applicable to any content/streaming platform with its own app-store and sell-you-stuff integration.
These cautions would apply to people sharing their Apple accounts for relatives buying AppleTV+ or Google accounts and Google’s Play store. Google is the worst in this scenario, since Google forces integration of their Play store, photos, cloud storage, GSuite, GVoice, and other services with their email services which a *lot" of people use as their primary or only email service.
Steam has an interesting clearly defined sharing model that seems promising.
The only way to protect yourself is to create separate accounts controlled by sepearate email accounts just for that device and for each store (Amazon, Google, Apple, Sony, Steam, EA, Epic, Origin, etc.) for each “device” to minimize risk if you lose it or it gets stolen or you sell it and forget, or you want to share with a relative.
And then you have an email account explosion amd managing all that crap. Which, IMO, is an (un?) intentional side effect to discourage sharing in a way that prevents you from protecting yourself from fraud or theft or loss if you do. It’s a shitty way to secretly shift more risk and liability onto your customers for wanting to get more value out of your services than you allow by creating these Sophie’s Choices to enforce customer lock in and prevent any disruption to your business model.
Thats why everything is a service now - you can’t “own” anything, only “rent” it. So that you have no other option than to pay “rent” forever and at whatever terms you are offered - a permanent tax, except collected by private corporations that you have zero control over by unelected management and shareholders.