HBO Max is the latest streaming company to crack down on password sharing.
The company announced that it would get “aggressive” with its messaging to customers, Deadline reported.
It wants to close loopholes by the end of the year.
Warner Bros. Discovery said it has been doing several months of testing to determine legitimate users and those who are not.
Once that is done, it will “turn on the more aggressive language around what needs to happen” to make sure that “we are putting the net in the right place, so to speak,” JB Perrette, the company’s head of streaming and gaming, said during the second-quarter earnings call.
He expects to see the results of the crackdown to be seen in 2026.
“The message language right now has been a fairly soft, cancel-able message,” Parrette said. It will “start to get more fixed and such that people have to take action as opposed to right now, sort of having to be a voluntary process.”
HBO Max has about 125.7 million subscribers worldwide, Deadline reported.
If a subscriber wants to add someone who lives outside of their home, they can pay $7.99 a month to do so, Fortune reported. It is only available for direct billing from HBO Max, not when someone subscribes through third parties such as app stores and internet providers, the company said.
The HBO Max Help Center states:
“You can share your HBO Max account with the people who live with you (the people in your household).
“People who don’t live with you (including family members who don’t live with you), need to sign up for their own HBO Max account.
“WarnerMedia-billed subscribers can share their HBO Max plan with someone who doesn’t live with them. For more info, go to Extra Member Add-On."
If you are sharing an account and don’t live with the main account holder, you may see a message suggesting that you transfer your profile to one you control.
HBO Max uses “account and profile information along with a combination of network and device information (including IP addresses, device IDs, and user activity) chosen at our discretion” to determine if the viewer is part of the household, the company said.
Netflix stopped allowing customers to share passwords in 2023, while Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ followed in 2024, according to Fortune.
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