Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain are the additional four nations where Netflix is imposing restrictions on password sharing.

If customers in certain nations want to share their subscription with friends and relatives who don't reside with them, they must pay an additional cost.

The measure, which will take effect in the UK by the end of March, comes in response to a crackdown on password sharing in South America.

According to Netflix, 100 million people worldwide use shared accounts.

Netflix's capacity to invest in new television content was being hampered by the loss of revenue from the shared accounts, the company claimed. It has stated that it intends to expand the new strategy to more nations in the upcoming months.

It has previously been simple for subscribers to give their login information and password to pals who live outside of their home.

When it tweeted, "Love is sharing a password," in 2017, Netflix even seemed to be endorsing the behavior.

However, increasing consumer subscription cancellations due to rising living expenses and increased competition in the streaming industry have forced Netflix to concentrate on increasing its revenue.

The company claimed that permitting accounts to be used by multiple people in a single household had "caused confusion" regarding who could share what and how.

It said members in Canada, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal would now be asked to set up a "primary location" for their account and manage who has access to it.

Members would still be able to watch Netflix when they travelled, both on personal devices and logging in in other places, for example in a hotel, it said.

For CAD$7.99 (£4.92) Canadian subscribers can add up an extra member as a "sub account" the blog said, with a maximum of two sub accounts per subscription.

The fee would be similar in New Zealand at NZ$7.99 (£4.17). There would be a price difference for sub accounts between Portugal at €3.99 (£3.54) and Spain at €5.99 (£5.32).

Netflix chief operating officer Gregory Peters last month acknowledged that the changes would not be "universally popular" and warned investors to expect some cancellations.

He said the firm expected to eventually make up those losses.

In the first half of 2022, Netflix saw its subscriber numbers fall sharply. It cut hundreds of jobs and put up prices to cover rising costs.

But the company saw a bigger-than-expected rise in user numbers in the last three months of 2022, up 7.66 million, taking its total paid subscribers worldwide to nearly 231 million.

In November, it introduced a cheaper ad-supported option in 12 countries, including most of Europe, the UK and the US.