Why You Shouldn’t Share Your Paramount Plus Subscription with Friends or Family

With Paramount Plus already out and adding to a rather long list of streaming services, folks want to know whether or not they can share their subscriptions with friends and family members. So, can you share the Paramount Plus subscription with friends and family? Let’s find out. 

Paramount Plus has been out for a couple of weeks, and it features a ton of content lots of people want to watch. The content comes from CBS, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, Smithsonian Channel, Paramount Network, and Paramount Pictures – and they deliver lots of original content as well. Most of the original content is made out of old CBS All Access shows and movies, but there are a few titles that have already landed under the new brand. Of course, more movies and shows will land in the months to come. 

As far as whether or not you can share your account, there are two answers here. Legally, not really. Practically? Well, nothing’s really keeping you. 

According to the Terms and Conditions on Paramount Plus, the situation is pretty straightforward.

That’s “legalese” for “no, you can’t share your account outside of your household”.

However, we are all pretty well aware that you’ll be sharing your account if you want to, regardless if you are allowed to or not. It’s actually one of the reasons why Netflix is now thinking about adding some extra hoops to jump through for folks who aren’t in your home and using the service. 

What to Know Before Sharing Paramount Plus with Friends and Family

There are a few things you need to know about sharing your Paramount Plus account with others. 

First of all, you will have to give them your credentials, which means your email address and your password. For obvious reasons, these are sensitive details to give someone. If this cannot convince you NOT to share your account, we at least ask that you make sure the password you use here is unique and you do not use it with a different account – especially in association with the same email address. 

Second of all, you should know that Paramount Plus allows up to 6 different profiles on the service and three simultaneous streams at all times. You can, however, connect to your account on however many devices you want.

Thirdly, you should have everyone make a different profile. As mentioned, up to six different profiles can be created on Paramount Plus, each of them with its own watchlist and watch history. In this way, at the very least, you’ll be able to have everyone on their own profiles, so they don’t mess up your viewing history, and so on. 

The Risks of Sharing Your Paramount Plus Account

Even if they are friends or family members, sharing accounts with other people comes with some risks. One of the biggest problems is that you’re sharing your password with them, which gives them the ability to completely control your account. 

• They can now delete any of the profiles you created.
• They can set up or change the Parental Controls settings, such as the 4-digit pin code or the restriction levels. 
• They can CHANGE your password. 
• They can CHANGE your email address.

And that, right there, is the reason why sharing accounts with others is dangerous – they can lock you out of your account. They can change both your password AND your email address with no input from your part. 

While other platforms come with some security steps here where they ask that you confirm the password change via email, and they most certainly ask that you follow a link sent to your email address when trying to change the address associated with your account, Paramount Plus does none of these things. 

If only the password could be changed without your input, it would have been (slightly) better, but Paramount Plus also allows folks to change your email address anytime they want. Resetting your password from the login page could have been done fairly easily, and you’d have regained control of your account in just a couple of minutes. By allowing the change of email address, however, you are at a far greater risk. 

What to Do If Your Account Is Taken Over

If you find that you’re in the bad situation of having someone you shared your account with simply take it over from you – they changed the email address and the password – and you can’t reason with them, you must first cut off the subscription. 

You can do this by going to the platform you used to subscribe through – Google Play, iTunes, Amazon, or Roku – and cancel your subscription through there. 

You at least get an email from Paramount Plus that tells you your email address has been switched out for your account, and you are advised to contact the customer support team if you didn’t make the change. So, do that. Contact the Customer Support team and explain your problem. There is a chance you’ll get your hands on the account once more. 

That being said, since you are not even supposed to share your account with others, this isn’t necessarily a security problem. However, they could have taken a few extra steps to ensure that if someone guesses your account credentials (or these leak out during a potential data breach), they can’t just take over your account with this little effort.