You all know somebody who’s got one. That account that a former beau, ex-roommate, friend, ex-friend, or parent let you join once to watch some killer show, and you just kept yourself signed into it because… why not?
Or you struck a deal with a friend. One of you would pay for Netflix, and the other would pay for HBO Max, and you’d each log into the other’s account. Everybody wins, except the streaming channels.
HBO Max, like any extensive streaming network, has been encouraging people to switch from shared accounts to individual accounts since May 2025. Now, according to Warner Bros. Discovery’s (which owns HBO Max) head of global streaming, the push to get you off your shared account is about to get a whole lot more “aggressive.” His words.
the crackdown is cracking down harder
Back in May, we got word that HBO had drawn up plans to begin a password-sharing crackdown that would begin with more carrot, less stick.
“It’s very soft messaging that will start getting firmer and more visible to subscribers over the months to come,” said JB Perrette, Warner Bros. Discovery’s head of global streaming, on an earnings call that took place on May 8, 2025.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO David Zaslav said the crackdown will begin softly and then grow more aggressive over the next 12 to 18 months, beginning in the US and then spreading across the world.
As reported by Deadline on August 7, “Asked about what ‘inning’ the process is in, to use the baseball cliché, Perrette said only the first. By the fourth quarter, he said, the process will be happening ‘in a much more aggressive fashion.’”
While the article doesn’t get into firm details on exactly how HBO Max would know who’s an account subscriber and who’s just a dirty, dirty account piggybacker, it did say that “several months of testing has enabled WBD to determine ‘who’s a legitimate user who may not be a legitimate user,’ Perrette said.
“Once that is determined, he continued, the next step is 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.’”
Nets. Crackdowns. Baseball. Yep. That’s the language of aggression, people.
The post HBO Max Is About to Get Even More Annoying About Password Sharing appeared first on VICE.
