Online entertainment streaming such as Netflix, news outlets with paywalls, and premium shopping platforms such as Amazon Prime all have one issue in common: Account sharing. Password sharing loses streaming giant Netflix in excess of $138 million a month alone, never mind the usual username and password hassles users experience. In fact, the entire streaming industry is forecasted to lose $12.5B annually come 2024 due to password sharing practices. And it isn’t just streaming platforms facing significant losses. Password sharing seems like a harmless transgression to most streaming customers. It’s reported that as many as 1 in 5 people are using a password from another account in order to access subscription video on-demand services, per a study from CordCutting.com.
Streaming giants know you are doing it; the problem is, up until now, there’s been no easy—or non-draconian—solution to restricting password sharing. Especially as most tech services have been designed with the assumption that an account will only be used by the person who set it up.
But blockchain technology offers a solution. It isn’t just the big corporate companies that will benefit from a verified ID-based solution that facilitates seamless login for private and secure access to your account. Consumers who sign up for a multitude of these services and platforms will also benefit by no longer needing to rely on one device or browser or remember various combinations of passwords in order to use any of these platforms.
Moreover, by harnessing verified digital IDs, passwords will become a thing of the past. Given that any one of us has over 100 online accounts, with nearly as many unique passwords to remember, shunning the password will be nothing short of beneficial.
Sharing Isn’t Always Caring
Netflix has been very successful, so successful, in fact, that people share accounts with not just their family but friends, work colleagues, holiday homes, etc. This is costing Netflix $138 million a month. And it’s not just Netflix; other streaming platforms are said to have 35% of millennials share their passwords, and just under a fifth of Generation Xers do the same. Baby Boomers don’t get off scot-free either, with 13% sharing passwords for streaming platforms, including companies like Apple, Disney, HBO.
The same also goes for news paywalls from the likes of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. They try to circumvent shared logins by making users suffer repeated logins with usernames and passwords along with multiple repeated preferences settings. Often, the reason for sharing accounts is simply a matter of convenience. Sharing one Netflix or Spotify account, for instance, can save costs, and using one Amazon account may help couples stay on top of household purchases and shared spending. Even if accounts are not shared explicitly, ie. you don’t make a point of giving a partner your login info – they may be shared implicitly especially if they can unlock your phone or computer, they may have implicit access to other accounts. But this trust can of course leave you vulnerable.
And sharing isn’t necessarily caring. Shared accounts frequently rely on old or easy-to-remember passwords, and many streaming services don’t offer two-factor authentication. All of this makes it easier for attackers to guess passwords or find credentials in data breaches that you may have reused for a streaming account or two. Even worse, they can charge extras to your credit card or steal the personal data in your profile, resulting in a massive security mess.
The solution offered by many streaming and entertainment giants is tethering individual IPs to individual accounts. But what if you are actually travelling with your laptop and wish to use your account on that? Further, some sites, including Netflix, Disney Plus and the US-only streaming platform Hulu have instilled a ban on virtual private networks, so when you watch Netflix in your local cafe or on public transport or on any other form of public WiFi, you leave your network wide open, allowing anyone to snoop.
Access should be tied to you, not your device, interface or physical location; if you’re the one who has paid for the account, the service should be available to you whenever and wherever you may be, obviously adhering to regional licensing agreements and rights.
Access should be tied to you, not your device, interface or physical location.
Digital IDs: A Win-Win
Rather than having to log in via a particular device in a specific locale and after mentally sifting through a cluster of unique passwords, digital IDs, underpinned by blockchain encrypted biometrically verified tech, will be the norm.
Through these devices, individuals will no longer have to angst over forgetting passwords and logins or whether a specific device or IP address is tied to a particular paywall. Instead, you simply have to use your biometrically verified and funded ID, and voila!: everything at your fingertips. Users would be able to access subscribed content without friction whether that be through flipboard, google apple or everyday websites, and on any platform mobile, web or even smart TV. Without suffering repeated logins and verification, security checks and repetitive preferences settings. With digital IDs, privacy preference settings could be specified via the users identity.
Tie payment to that ID, and you can also ensure that monthly payments are coming from the verified ID of the user who is in confirmed possession of the payment method and not being shared by anyone. This also opens up the opportunity to use micropayments for pay-as-you-go content, meaning no more adverts. And feedback left by a verified account holder, leaves other users of the platform in no doubt that it’s an authentic review.
Further, by utilising micropayments, a digital ID can provide seamless access to content users consume without annoying web ads.
Companies can now offer customers a simple, secure way to log in to their favourite services removed from the outmoded password. With a digital ID, all users need is their biometrics, a fingerprint, or facial scan. There’s no need to come up with and remember multiple unique passwords. It’s a win-win: customers gain a frictionless experience at the same time as increasing their security, and it lessens the reliance on the company’s side to protect and safely manage users’ data.
These services should cater to the consumer, not the other way around. That’s why verified IDs make sense. They kill two birds with one stone. With this system in place, firms like Netflix won’t fall prey to account sharing. Individuals can still buy multiple “screens” and divide them between their families, but the millions of profit lost to a seemingly harmless method of piracy can be recouped with a reliable, verifiable solution. At the same time, consumers will gain from having all their subscriptions no matter where they may be, at the tips of the fingers, quite literally.