Company will restrict access to accounts used outside main holder’s home Streaming giant says it will not offer extra members option LONDON: Netflix has begun cracking down on password sharing in the Middle East, as the region becomes the latest to be affected by the move. The streaming giant said on Thursday that people across the Middle East and North Africa region would encounter limitations on sharing passwords beyond their households. “Beginning today, we’ll start to address account sharing between households in almost all of our remaining countries,” the company said in a statement. At the time of writing, users in Saudi Arabia and the UAE had yet to receive an email informing them of the crackdown, but a Netflix representative told Arab News that the “policy has been implemented all over the globe.” Netflix is cracking down on password sharing by restricting access to accounts that are used outside the main holder’s home. The streaming giant will use IP addresses, Wi-Fi networks and device IDs to track unauthorized access, and users will be notified via email before they are blocked. Although customers expected Netflix to roll out a plan that would allow them to add up to two members outside of their household for an additional fee, the streaming giant said it would not be offering such an option in the wake of recent changes to its subscription charges. “In these markets, we’re not offering an extra member option given that we’ve recently cut prices in a good number of these countries (for example, Indonesia, Croatia, Kenya and India) and penetration is still relatively low in many of them so we have plenty of runway without creating additional complexity.” The crackdown on password sharing, which began last year, appears to be paying off for Netflix, as the company is now seeing growth after a period of decline. The company on Wednesday reported that it added almost 6 million subscribers in the past quarter, beating expectations.