HBO Max Is About to Crack Down on Password Sharing Even More

HBO Max is making more changes to its security systems. Deadline reports sharing account access via passwords with other households won’t be allowed much sooner.

Netflix has been actively doing similar audits. Other streaming services are seemingly following suit.

JB Perrette, head of streaming and gaming at Warner Bros. Discovery said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call that messaging to subscribers will become more “aggressive.” The biggest impact will be seen in 2026.

Streaming companies cancelling password sharing say it will show a significant financial payoff. Testing the idea has enabled Warner Bros Discovery, which is the parent company of HBO Max, to determine “who’s a legitimate user who may not be a legitimate user,” Perrette said. Next will come the ability to “turn on the more aggressive language around what needs to happen” in order to and make sure that “we are putting the net in the right place, so to speak.”

“The message language right now has been a fairly soft, cancel-able message,” he 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.” Once those directives are established, he said, “the real benefit will start probably in the fourth quarter and then kick in in 2026.”

Netflix initiated a crackdown on sharing passwords in 2023. In 2024, they announced over $9 billion in revenue and millions of new subscribers, per CNN.

“It added more subscribers than many analysts, myself included, expected,” eMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes said at the time. “This signals that password sharing was even more common than previously thought as Netflix keeps converting freeloader viewers into paid users.” In addition, Netflix also has other avenues of growth including the company’s newer advertising-supported subscription tier added.