Cable Companies Are Officially Cracking Down On People Sharing Passwords

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If you subscribed to the Holy Trinity of streaming services (HBO GO, Netflix, and Hulu), you’d have to shell out almost $34 a month in order to avoid being out of the loop— an amount that can be easily lowered by mutually sharing passwords with a couple of friends. However, even if you don’t resort to gaming the system, the price you’ll pay for access to those platforms pales in comparison to a cable subscription, which costs an average of more than $100 over the same time span.

When you consider the only thing cable is good for is sporting events and reruns of Cops, it’s virtually impossible to justify handing over that amount of money. As a result, most people under the age of 50 scour the Earth in search of the log-in information that will let them stream ESPN, which usually involves snatching your parents’ bill and setting up an online account.

Gaining access to a cable subscription is the closest most people will ever come to scoring a golden ticket, but if you happen to be the beneficiary of someone else’s log-in info, the gravy train might be about to come to a stop.

According to Bloomberg,  Tom Rutledge (the CEO of the parent company of Spectrum, the cable provider who changed their name from Time Warner in an attempt to shed their reputation as one of the most hated companies in America) has announced they will be cracking down on the widespread abuse of password swapping:

“It’s piracy. It’s people consuming something they haven’t paid for. The more the practice is viewed with a shrug, the more it creates a dynamic where people believe it’s acceptable. And it’s not.”

Rutledge said that one user had 30,000 people streaming his account at the same time, which I can even admit seems a tad excessive. When you consider how much the cable industry has sunk in previous years, I guess you can’t really blame them for doing whatever they can to stay afloat.

Connor Toole avatar and headshot for BroBible
Connor Toole is the Deputy Editor at BroBible. He is a New England native who went to Boston College and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Frequently described as "freakishly tall," he once used his 6'10" frame to sneak in the NBA Draft and convince people he was a member of the Utah Jazz.