The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) said on Tuesday the practice broke copyright law.
It is common in the UK for people who don’t live together to share their streaming service passwords, despite this typically being against terms of service agreements.
Netflix has never indicated it would take any legal action in such cases.
The IPO told the BBC it was both a criminal and civil matter.
“There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright-protected works without payment,” it said.
"These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement, depending on the circumstances.
“Where these provisions are provided in civil law, it would be up to the service provider to take action through the courts if required.”
There is no evidence to suggest any of the major streaming video operators in the UK would do this.
Research firm Digital i told the Guardian in April 2022 it estimated more than a quarter of UK Netflix subscribers - around four million - were sharing their passwords.
The following month, then-Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries revealed she was one of them.
“My mum has access to my account, the kids do. I have Netflix but there are four other people who can use my Netflix account in different parts of the country,” she told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Why can’t people share their information if they choose to do so? Information gets shared without consent fairly regularly, so imagine being told that you can’t share stuff which you have paid for…
More than a quarter of UK Netflix subscribers - around four million - are sharing their passwords.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries revealed she was one of them.
“My mum has access to my account, the kids do. I have Netflix but there are four other people who can use my Netflix account in different parts of the country,” she told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Presumably, those “four other people” can pass on the password, too.
Now I’m having to think about it, I do wonder how it all works…I mean, surely making all these different accounts, with (presumably) different ISP’s would invalidate any access? So one account could have 10 or 20 users on it? How very strange
I can see the logic, and business sense, of it … Ancestry works the same way. If you pay for a subscription to use their services you can’t really expect your whole family, dotted about the country to use the same service for free.
Actually I’m surprised that Netflix have allowed anyone to do that anyway for so long.
Netflix can follow Disney Plus which is limited to four registered devices at a time. Not much password sharing going on there since a particular device is registered against a profile.
Who knew? Not I …