As I booted up my Netflix account, something seemed off. My ‘continue watching for Bethan’ section was filled with shows I’d never heard of, and certainly hadn’t started watching.
As my seven-year-old niece loves Larva Island, I thought maybe she watched it on my account by accident. But the other entries hadn’t been made by myself, or the only other people with access to my account - my parents.
Myself, nor my mum or dad had been watching Teen Wolf, Let’s Fight Ghost, Thirty-Nine, Tall Girl 2 or the several anime cartoons that found themselves in my watch list.
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Previously, paying for multiple screens to have the app on your TV, phone, tablet and anything else you can watch the latest drama on has been ideal. But it quickly became clear that someone had gained access to our account that shouldn’t have.
Now, you may not mind your boyfriend or uni housemates piggybacking your account, especially if they buy you a coffee in return.
But we discovered that someone had been logging into our account from Vietnam and using my profile to hold their streaming marathons.
As soon as we realised what had happened, we were able to secure the account and resume safe streaming as usual.
However, I wanted to share with you first, how to see where your account is being used, and then how to stop people taking advantage of it and potentially accessing sensitive personal information held on your account.
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First head to account and scroll to the bottom to find ‘recent device streaming activity’. It was here I discovered that since January 1, someone had been accessing my account from Ho Chi Minh City, and another entry in Malaysia.
In fact, they’d all been using my account more frequently than I had.
You can find exactly what shows have been streamed from your account by clicking account, and then the drop down menu menu on your profile and then ‘viewing activity’.
Between January and March they appear to have watched the whole series of Demon Slayer, Law Abiding Citizen, 25 episodes of Attack on Titan, The Tinder Swindler, dozens of Larva Island, Minions, Red Notice, for which I’ll give them credit because it’s a great movie featuring Ryan Reynolds.
They’d also streamed The Seven Deadly Sins, Tall Girl and Tall Girl 2, The Strange House, The Dark Tower and the entire Twilight Saga.
I wouldn’t mind so much but, I’ve not even had a chance to watch The Tinder Swindler myself yet.
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My account hacker also started to watch episode one of the first season of Peaky Blinders, but it appears to have been of little interest to them as they didn’t binge watch it.
Having discovered that my account had clearly been compromised, it was time to lock it down and secure it.
Netflix recommends changing your password to something unique that isn’t used for any other sites or apps. It should be at least eight characters long, and a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols using both upper and lower-case letters.
The streaming site even suggests using a password manager to make it easier to keep track of passwords.
Most importantly, sign out of all devices connected to your account, so that you will need to sign in again with your new password. You’ll likely be more selective of who you give this out to.
Other actions you can take include reporting suspicious activity, adding a phone number for account recovery and be careful of phishing emails looking to gain access to your account.
A spokesperson for Netflix said: "At Netflix, we take fraud seriously. Contact us if you notice suspicious or unrecognised charges or unauthorised account activity. If you believe you've found a security vulnerability on a Netflix property or app, please inform us as quickly as possible through our bug bounty program.
"Do not disclose the vulnerability publicly until it is fixed. We appreciate your help. We review all reports and will do our best to address the issue in a timely fashion."
I’m certainly going to be much more careful with my Netflix account and be keeping a close eye on the streaming activity in future.
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