Netflix adds the ability to kick freeloading devices off your streaming account

Everyone knows that one guy or girl who doesn’t pay for Netflix but racks up massive viewing hours. A bit like that houseguest on your couch who won’t leave, these users tend to be hard to shift. Well, the streaming platform is giving users the ability to give them the boot.

The new feature is one that has taken its sweet time coming. Netflix calls it Manage Access and Devices because it… lets you manage access and devices on an account.

No more Netflix for you

Using the feature is as easy as clicking over to the relevant menu (Manage Access and Devices). From here, users can see which devices and user account recently accessed the main account. If you no longer want that user on there, it’s a simple job to log someone out remotely.

The ability to log out of Netflix via the interface isn’t new. The ability to do so for a single device, however, is. We really want to believe it’s because the platform saw the need for such a feature and is attempting to make users’ lives easier. But recent behaviour — mostly to do with cracking down on password sharing — suggests otherwise.

It’s probably a total coincidence that this “much-requested feature” also potentially puts a bunch of viewers in the position of “paying for their own damned Netflix account”. Still, it’s here for everyone, whether you’re using the web, Android, or iOS versions of the popular app. It might just be time to prune some of the freeloaders at long last. Log ’em out, change the password, and stop answering their annoyed WhatsApp messages. Netflix makes more money (eventually) or (more likely) someone else catches the mooch on their account. Simple, yes?