Reminder: the Disney+ subscription (€10.99 per month, €109.90 per year) allows members of the same household to “[…] watch 4 different contents on 4 screens simultaneously”, says this web page. Under these conditions, the temptation is strong to share your username and password with outside people.
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The hunt for those who share their Disney+ account is on
If the practice was tolerated until now, Mickey’s house signaled the end of recess on September 25, 2024.
The subscription video on demand (SVOD) platform now tracks suspicious connections. How ? Let’s take an example.
- Marie has a Disney+ subscription (4 simultaneous screens) which she uses mainly with her tablet and her Smart TV in her house in Verviers, considered by the application as her home.
- Marie entrusted her username and password to her cousin Marc, who lives in Brussels, for a long time.
- With the new Disney+ policy, sooner or later Marc will receive a message like “This TV does not seem to be part of the Disney+ household for this account”.
- Two options will present themselves to Marc: press “I’m traveling” and “Update home”. The first is not sustainable. The second is not viable, because Marie will receive an email asking her to confirm the relocation of the household.
Internet connection to locate the home
Technically speaking, it is not geographical distance that attracts Disney+’s attention, but the use of an Internet connection other than that of the home.
“To determine your household,” Disney+ explains on this page, “we use the logic that devices that belong to the same household should regularly use the same Internet connection […] We also consider other factors, such as regular use of your Disney+ account on the same device over a certain period of time […] Disney+ does not collect or use precise geolocation data to determine your household.”
An extra €5.99 per month and a futile barrier
To keep Marc in the loop, Marie can integrate him into her Disney+ subscription like Additional subscriber against an extra of €5.99 per month.
After receiving an email invitation, Marc will use a separate username and password. “The additional Subscriber can watch content on 1 device at a time,” specifies the streaming service.
Strangely, Disney+ imposes a surreal constraint as it is so easy to circumvent: “You cannot send an additional Subscriber invitation to someone whose email address is associated with an active or expired Disney+ subscription.”
In short, if Marc once had a Disney+ subscription associated with the email address [email protected], the platform will refuse to send him to this address the invitation to join Marie’s subscription like Additional subscriber.
But one minute will be enough for Marc to create a new free email address, unknown to the battalion at Disney+.
Up to two additional Subscribers at Netflix
Netflix has been tracking account sharing in Belgium since May 2023. If the logic of home is also applicable, the American SVOD colossus differentiates itself on two points:
L’Additional subscriber is billed at €3.99 per month, compared to €5.99 at Disney.
Netflix’s Standard subscription (€14.99) accepts only one Additional subscribercompared to two for the Premium subscription (€19.99).
