No one wants to have that Goldilocks and the Three Bears feeling: “Who’s been signing into my Netflix account?” Getting hacked is disconcerting, even if all the culprit managed to do was watch 13 straight hours of Daredevil. No matter how impressed you are with their dedication, taking away their access is still your priority number one. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix, as described by Motherboard‘s Rachel Pick, who recently found her account infiltrated by a Narcos fan.
Since Netflix accounts are often shared, it can be hard to be sure that your account has actually been infiltrated. If you notice movies and TV shows showing up on your list of “Recently Watched” content that seem out of place, that’s a strong clue. Pick initially thought her account was simply experiencing a glitch, but then she realized that her viewing history was more than a little suspicious.
After consulting with a colleague, she went to the website haveibeenpwned.com. There, she was able to check out the email address associated with her account. Lo and behold, she found that a hacker had shared her information with the public, making it freely available to anyone who wanted to binge watch without getting their own Netflix subscription.
If you see strange activity on your account, you can follow Pick’s lead and investigate whether or not you’ve been pwned. Of course, if you’d rather be safe than sorry, you can skip that step and go straight to the fix: change your password. The important thing to remember is that you should change the password of any other account that uses the same one. Quora recommends making your new password longer and more difficult.
Fortunately, as Pick points out, Netflix obscures your credit card information, so the Goldilocks in your account is basically just after the TV show that’s “just right.” While inconvenient, it shouldn’t lead to any larger problems.
