Netflix has for some time imposed conditions on our use of its services. Before the start of this campaign against shared accounts, you could already notice that it applied to certain restrictions. Most notable was try to prevent access to Netflix using a VPN.
The move made sense thanks to a VPN you can pretend to be in another country and access a catalog which, due to legal rights, Netflix may be restricted to a specific region. But now the subject takes on a new dimension, especially if we add iCloud Private Relay to the equation.
The risks associated with using the IP address to locate us
The main mechanism that Netflix uses to determine whether or not we share an account is our IP addressprecisely its location. Here, therefore, special attention should be paid to VPNs. The truth is that although the use of commercial VPN solutions to improve our privacy is increasingly widespread, their presence in the market is still quite residual.
The situation changes, but with iCloud Private Relay. The company’s service, which should not be confused with a classic VPN, has the same effect on our IP address: it hides it. If we add to this that, in the case of an Apple service, its use is called to expand gradually, we have several ingredients so that Many are wondering why Netflix says it’s sharing the account when it’s not..
Recalling that iCloud Private Relay only masks our IP address when we use Safari, consider, for example, an account used only at home, on Apple TV, through the application on iPhone and iPad, and on Mac. on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, Netflix will receive our IP address and location directly. On the Mac, where the Netflix application does not exist, if we use Safari, iCloud Private Relay will communicate another location to Netflix. And with that We have served the big question that more than one can ask: “How to share the account?”.
Fortunately, the situation has a solution. One option is to use another browser to access Netflix on our Mac, although the easiest is surely use the option “reload by displaying the IP address” that Safari gives us, so that Netflix knows where we are.
A process, yes, which must be remembered and which adds a little more complexity to the use of a service whose main attraction has always been the ease of access to content. We will see, over the weeks, how Netflix applies the restrictions to shared accounts and how do you improve your detection to avoid false positives. In any case, the question is served, where is iCloud Private Relay in all this?
