- Love is sharing a password
or at least that's what Netflix used to say.
These days they seem to care a lot more about.
That's right.
Netflix's cracked down on password sharing
has already started.
So if you're still using your ex's Netflix account,
it's a matter of time
before they notice the bigger bill and cut you off.
Or is this.
Climb aboard mateys for with just a few clicks
and zero credit card numbers,
Netflix will have no idea that you moved out years ago
and you don't even have to mess with your router to do it.
Can I get an argh?
- [Cameraman] Argh!
- Yes, are you ready for this message from our sponsor?
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(upbeat music)
For almost 10 years,
Netflix has not only allowed multiple users to watch
with a single account,
but they've even provided tools to tailor the experience
to each individual.
None of that is changing.
What is changing
is that Netflix now says that a single account
is for members of a single physical household.
So little Jimmy off at college, he doesn't count anymore.
Now I wanna make it clear before we move on
that this is well within their rights
and any circumvention of their terms of service
could lead to the termination of your account
or whatever enforcement they deem appropriate.
But hey, you click the video,
so I'm pretty sure you don't give two hoots
about any of that.
Let's move on.
Once this change rolls out in your region,
every account will have a primary location
and any devices that use the account
need to connect from that location at least once a month.
If you go longer than that,
you're gonna have to pay up more on that later.
First, let's talk about primary locations.
If you're using a computer or a phone,
Netflix will attempt to automatically
determine your primary location
through a combination of your logged IP addresses,
your logged device IDs,
and your account activity.
Again, more on that later.
You can also explicitly set a primary location
but the only way to do this is through a TV
or a set top box like the Nvidia Shield.
Curiously, when we tried this though
from our office on a brand new account,
we just got an error message
and then when we contacted support,
they informed us that our primary location
had been set automatically anyway.
So your mileage may vary on the whole
manual primary location thing.
Frankly speaking, from how disorganized
this whole rollout has been
it doesn't surprise me that the process is a little messy.
It's just especially frustrating
to encounter these weird bumps in the road
when they're right in the middle of giving us
less for our money.
Anywho, once your primary location is set,
all we need to do to enjoy our shared Netflix in peace
is make sure that Netflix thinks that we live there,
at least some of the time.
They explicitly state that they allow use while traveling.
To achieve this, we need a VPN.
But don't click away
because I'm not talking about Surfshark or NordVPN
or anything like that.
Netflix cracked down on the use
of that sort of VPN years ago.
What I'm talking about
is running a VPN server of your very own
from the account's primary location.
That way, your kid who's off at university or your SO
can connect to that VPN server
and route their traffic through it
to trick Netflix into thinking
that they're still just chilling from home.
Perhaps in some nice new pajama pants from lttstore.com.
But Linus, I hear you ask,
doesn't making a VPN mean that we have to fiddle around
in our router settings?
Surprisingly, no, unless you want to.
The easiest way that we found to do this is Tailscale.
Not a sponsor by the way.
Just really cool software.
Go to tailscale.com
and click on Use Tailscale for free, and sign up.
We're gonna use the same account in all of our locations
but with a few extra steps,
you can share machines across accounts.
It just gets a little tougher to manage
if some of your users are less technically inclined.
Once you've logged in, add your first device.
We're gonna assume that there's a Windows PC
somewhere in your primary location
that will be left on all the time,
but you can also host it on a Raspberry Pi or on a Mac.
The important thing is that it is always online
because otherwise you ain't watching no Netflix.
We're gonna click on Download Tailscale for Windows,
install it and login.
Once we're connected,
the website walks us through the setup
asking us to set up a second device.
For our example, we're gonna use an Android set top box
like the Nvidia Shield.
We open the Play Store, search for Tailscale
and Install the app.
Once you've logged in, go back to the Windows machine
and check the browser.
The website should have updated
to show you the second device.
And to show you how to ping between devices
if you wanna run a quick test,
we're gonna click on Success.
This takes us to What's next?
where we can just click on the Go to admin console button
which will take us to the proper control panel
where we can see our machines listed,
their IPs on our virtual network,
and their current status.
Next, we need to decide which of our devices
will be our server
or as Tailscale calls it our exit node.
This is the machine that we're gonna route
all of our traffic through,
so that Netflix thinks that we are watching
from that location all the time.
In our case, that's the Windows PC.
So we're gonna right click on the little Tailscale icon
in the system tray here,
click on Exit node, and then Run exit node.
It's gonna give us a little warning
and since we're okay with all of what we're doing,
we're gonna say Yes.
Now it'll take a few moments for that change
to get to the website.
So in the meantime, let's rename our devices
so they're a little easier to remember.
If we click on the meatballs menu on the right side,
we can can Edit machine name for each
and we're gonna call them mom-pc and shield.
Now you can see that this little Exit Node flag
has come up for mom-pc,
which tells us that mom-pc has offered to be an exit node
for our other devices.
We need to approve that in the admin console
before it'll work.
So we go back to the meatballs menu for mom-pc
and click Edit route settings.
In the window that pops up,
we just need to click Use as exit node.
It's gonna give us a warning here about key expiry
by the way.
Basically it's telling us
that we're gonna have to reauthenticate periodically.
The default is every few months, but we can turn that off.
Just close the popup,
go back to the meatballs menu and pick disable expiry.
The final step on the server is to right click
on the Tailscale icon in the tray,
select Preferences and check Run unattended.
That's gonna allow Tailscale to run as a service
even if nobody is logged into the Windows machine.
It gives another little warning
and a help message and we just say argh to that.
I mean, sorry, Yes.
We click Yes.
Okay, we're almost there, I swear.
Back in the Tailscale app on our client device,
we go to the menu and select Use exit node.
A dialogue pops up and we pick mom-pc.
The main screen of the app
will now show that we are using an exit node
which means that all of our internet traffic
from the shield is going through mom-pc.
So if we bring up Netflix, everything is good.
It's easier to show this on a computer though,
so let's go over to a laptop.
We're not connected to Tailscale right now.
And if we Google my IP, we can see that our IP is, okay,
we're not gonna show you that,
but you can see what it starts with.
Now we go to Tailscale and use our mom-pc exit node
and you can see that the icon now
has a tiny arrow indicating
that we're going through an exit node.
We check our IP again, and there you have it.
It thinks we're on the same IP
as that workstation that we set up in the other building.
Now as tail scale warned us,
the Windows exit node isn't really optimized yet.
So if we do a speed test, the result is not that impressive.
But it's fast enough for a smooth Netflix experience
which was the whole point
of this exercise in the first place.
All you need to do is disconnect Tailscale on the client
if you wanna do something other than Netflix
without using up bandwidth on mom-pc.
That's another thing you'll need to consider
is depending on how many users are accessing Netflix
through mom-pc.
Mom might need a faster internet connection.
Now hold on a minute.
Earlier we learned
that Netflix makes allowances for traveling.
That means, in theory at least,
that as long as we remember to use this VPN method
to login to Netflix at least once a month
on each device that is not in the primary location,
the rest of the time
we should be able to just go about our business
and Netflix should just assume that, you know,
we travel a lot.
Well, maybe.
We can't know with 100% certainty
how Netflix decides where you are.
Netflix could log everything you do in their apps
or on their website and determine that,
hmm, Profile A usually logs in
using a Windows PC and a Samsung TV
from IP address one, which is the primary location.
Meanwhile, they could observe that Profile B
never uses any of Profile A's devices,
instead sticking to their MacBook and iPhone
from a totally different IP address
except exactly once a month.
So I would say that you might wanna err on the side
of consistently using your VPN
rather than doing only periodic check-ins,
but it remains to be seen
even if they know that you're totally not living there.
How draconian Netflix is actually going to be
about enforcement?
There is a very fine line
between extracting maximum value from a customer
and just ticking them off to the point
where they cancel out right.
For the tech inclined, by the way,
Tailscale is not the only solution we found.
Another one that doesn't require you
to mess with your router is SoftEther VPN
from the University of Tsukuba in Japan.
Or if you don't mind poking around in your router settings,
a WireGuard VPN is a fantastic solution
with apps available on many platforms.
You can use a tool like PiVPN to install the server
on a single board computer or a Linux machine.
And if you wanna use a Windows machine as your server,
GitHub user micahmo has created a simple application
to guide you through that process.
Links for all of these will be in the video description.
One final thing to remember though,
even if you have a fast enough interconnect connection
and you can afford to cover Netflix for all your buddies,
anytime you let someone connect remotely to your computer
or to your network, you are taking a security risk
and potentially allowing everything
on your network to be seen by that outside party
or anyone that they are careless enough
to allow to use their devices.
So with any of the solutions we've presented,
just make sure that you can trust the people
that you're giving access to.
Like you can trust me to tell you about our sponsor.
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If you wanna learn more about setting up your own VPN,
maybe check out this other video we did on this topic
back in 2020.