What's Your Password?

Most streaming video services have rules limiting account sharing. A lot of people ignore them.

- Kaitlin Pitsker

STREAMING-SERVICE SUBSCRIBERS—and their friends and families—got a jolt this summer. A West Coast appeals court upheld the conviction of a man who used a former colleague’s log-in to access databases at his previous employer without its knowledge or permission. Soon news stories reported that the decision could also apply to subscribers who share, say, their Netflix passwords—which would make roughly half of all streaming-service subscribers guilty of a federal crime.

Don’t panic. “The average consumer has nothing to worry about,” says Mark Grossman, a lawyer who specializes in technology law. “You’re more likely to win the lottery than face legal consequences.”

Account sharing for online streaming services, such as Amazon, HBO, Hulu and Netflix, cost the industry $500 million in revenues in 2015, according to a study by research firm Parks Associates. But the major providers have been slow to curb the practice, although some have made changes to control the number of devices that can be used for a single account or the number of videos users can stream at the same time.

Your provider’s sharing policy may be ambiguous. For example, most companies use the word