One in five already uses third-party account data: Account piracy costs Netflix millions
The use of other people’s user accounts is a problem for streaming platforms that causes significant financial damage. According to the U.S. analytics firm CordCutting, Netflix alone loses $192 million a month due to this type of piracy—more than Amazon Prime Video ($45 million) and Hulu ($40 million) combined. Across all providers, on average, one in five users accesses someone else’s account, most often that of a relative.
"It wasn't so long ago that expensive cable or stable TV packages were the only way to access exclusive series and movie content," says the CordCutting report. But times have changed. "Today, every average user has at least one subscription to a video streaming portal. And this number will continue to rise in the future," explain the experts. The problem: "Individual streaming offers may only cost a few dollars per month. But if you also want particularly exclusive content, it can quickly become expensive."
This is where the use of third-party accounts - known as "subscription mooching" - often comes into play. "You can save a lot of money every month by using someone else's login details. With an estimated 137 million Netflix customers worldwide, it doesn't seem that difficult to find someone who will provide you with their account details," emphasizes the US company. The savings per person could easily amount to several hundred dollars over an entire year. "Of course, the losses incurred by streaming providers as a result are significantly greater," the CordCutting analysis points out.
According to the analysis, an average of one in five people access content on streaming portals via a third-party account. This piracy phenomenon is most widespread among millennials: At Netflix, 95.8 percent of users from this generation, born in the period from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, engage in mooching. This group is also in first place at Hulu with 50.7 percent. Only on Amazon Prime Video do the "baby boomers" land in the top position with 63.1 percent.
It is also interesting to see where the third-party user data comes from. "Almost 48 percent of Netflix moochers say they got their logins from their parents. A further 14 percent used their siblings' data for this purpose," according to the CordCutting report. Amazon (parents: 32 percent, siblings: 14 percent) and Hulu (parents: 26 percent, siblings: 11 percent) also show that their own relatives are very generous when it comes to sharing their subscription accounts. (pte)
