YouTube Premium Family plan accounts are being flagged for not being in the same household

[Karlston]

 

YouTube has started cracking down on Premium Family plan accounts that are not located under the same roof. The streaming service has required users to be in the same household, but it didn't really enforce the rule until now.

 

A month's subscription of YouTube Family Premium costs $23, and allows up to five family members to share the subscription, and includes YouTube Music, Background Play, Downloads, and ad-free YouTube. A regular YouTube Premium plan for individuals costs $13.99 per month. I wonder why people want to share the accounts?

 

 

Google's support page related to the subscription says, "To be eligible to share a YouTube family membership, each family members must live at the same residential address as the family manager. Every 30 days, an electronic check-in will confirm this requirement."

 

Reports from users reveal that YouTube is sending emails to users warning them that they may not be in the same household, and that their membership will be paused in 14 days. Users will remain in the family group, and watch YouTube with ads, but won't get any Premium benefits.  So it appears Google is tracking the location of the accounts, to determine whether they are in the same house. This is probably done by monitoring and comparing the IP addresses of each member, as well as some other location-based data.

 

Netflix does it, so does Disney+, Hulu as well. HBO Max is about to tighten its rules about account sharing this month. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out that it's a common practice by streaming services. Frankly, I'm surprised it took Google this long to do implement this rule, given how aggressively it has been pushing YouTube Premium for those who use ad blockers. Android Police points out that this Family rule change could be related to the new two-person Premium plan that YouTube introduced a few months ago.

 

If you don't need to download videos for offline viewing, or any of the other Premium benefits, just watch YouTube with an ad blocker on. I use Firefox and uBlock Origin on my computer, and Safari with uBlock Origin Lite on my iPhone. You can do the same with any Chromium based browser with uBlock Origin Lite. As for mobile apps, there's NewPipe, Revanced. Want to watch YouTube on your Android TV? Use SmartTube. There's also AdGuard, Pihole, etc.

 

 

Source

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Posted Wednesday 3 September 2025 at 3:31 am AEST (my time).

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