Why I Chose to Transfer My Netflix Profile Rather Than Start From Scratch

You don’t realize how much you have crafted your Netflix recommendations over the years until you lose access to your account and have to start from scratch. Luckily, I temporarily regained access to my account and immediately used the Transfer Profile feature to get my old algorithm back. Here’s why…

How I Lost Access to My Old Netflix Account

I lost access to my account due to one reason: Netflix’s password sharing crackdown. While Netflix used to allow people to share accounts despite living in different locations, in recent years it has started cracking down on these arrangements.

Back when Netflix allowed (and sometimes even encouraged) password sharing, two of my friends and I had an account that we shared. Netflix eventually changed tack and started discouraging password sharing. For a while though, South Africa seemed to have escaped the crackdown, as users in the US and other countries started receiving notifications that they would need to stop sharing their accounts.

But eventually in mid-2024, the dreaded notification appeared on my screen too. I thought I would get a prompt to move over when it was time, but I either missed this notification or it never arrived. Instead, I was locked out of the account unless I provided a code sent to the owner. I couldn’t stream from my old account anymore.

Why I Chose to Transfer My Profile As Soon As I Could

I begrudgingly accepted that the password crackdown had reached our shores and subscribed to Netflix on my own email account. But I immediately noticed a difference — the recommendations were almost full of reality TV shows and Netflix’s lower-quality but popular offerings. Then there were the countless recommendations for things that I’d already watched. I realized that I had crafted viewing habits over years that were now lost.

Luckily, I temporarily regained access to my old account through a signed in browser session that hadn’t been blocked. Rather than try to wait until I got kicked out again, I immediately did a profile transfer on Netflix. I used the old session to create a copy of my profile history and transferred it to the newly created account’s email address.

The improvement was immediately noticeable. I could continue watching series from where I had left off, the recommendations were more to my taste, and I wasn’t getting recommendations for things I had already seen. The new profile is also still there, so I can always try it out if I want to see a fresh Netflix algorithm.

If you’re sharing your account currently outside of your household, I’d recommend transferring your profile rather than starting from scratch as well. It’s frustrating when services change their rules to force more subscriptions, but at the end of the day, I didn’t want to risk my curated algorithm and have to start all over again.