Survey reveals how Netflix freeloaders enjoy the site for free

There was a joke I saw on Twitter a few weeks back which jokingly said that there was just one lone Netflix subscriber sharing his account with the rest of the world. A similar joke on the same topic claims that some people stay in otherwise unhappy relationships just to keep their Netflix access up and running. The crux of these jokes, obviously, is that password sharing for streaming sites like Netflix is incredibly common, so much so that some people — after a few years time — aren’t even sure whose credentials they’re using to log in to the site in the first place.

Interestingly enough, Netflix has never really cracked down on password sharing in a serious way. Far from it, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings a few years ago explained that the company views password sharing in a positive light, insofar that individuals who use a shared password are likely to become paying subscribers later on down the road.

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With that said, Exstreamist recently conducted an incredibly interesting survey which set out to determine who Netflix viewers tend to rely upon the most in order to access the site for free. As to the methodology of the survey, the resulting data was sourced from 891 Netflix viewers who indicated that they access Netflix via the login credentials of someone who they don’t currently live with.

When the results came in, the survey revealed that 22% of respondents log in to Netflix with the credentials of their parents. Meanwhile, 20% of respondents indicated that they use the credentials of a friend while 17% indicated that they use the credentials of their current boyfriend or girlfriend. Moreover, 13% of respondents said that they use the credentials of their ex, a statistic which obviously brings to light a related question: are Netflix subscribers who share their passwords even aware of it?

To this point, when respondents were asked if the people they borrow Netflix access from were aware of their access, 44% of respondents said no. Regardless, rampant password sharing hasn’t really managed to slow Netflix down. Far from it, Netflix during the first quarter of 2018 saw revenue jump by 43% as its worldwide subscriber base surged to 125 million.

Exstreamist’s full survey results on Netflix password sharing can be viewed over here.

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See the original version of this article on BGR.com