Netflix Privacy: How To Protect Your Viewing In Social Media

Thinking about watching a Jennifer Aniston/Ashton Kutcher/your guilty pleasure of choice tonight because, honestly, who is going to know? Think again. Netflix has introduced social sharing features as of Wednesday, allowing users to link their accounts to their Facebook profiles and post about what they have been watching.

This is a first for Netflix, since, until recently, Netflix was prevented from disclosing its customers' history as part of the Video Privacy Protection Act, dated of 1980. This situation was unique to Netflix U.S. since no similar law previously existed in any of the countries where Netflix is offered.

Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings lobbied Congress to change U.S. law and put his alliance with Facebook into full effect.

"Social is going to be everything," he said in January. "You tell your friends about what you watch and they'll watch much more of what we offer."

To compensate for this lack of social component, Netflix had a "friends" social browsing aspect, through which users could connect their accounts and browse through each other's movie queues. But the feature did not pick on, and it was eliminated in 2010.

Netflix claims that the sharing is up to the user, and not everything will be posted -- just movies watched, not queues. But some news organizations have warned that once you agree on sharing, everything you watch gets shared automatically -- past and present. Your Facebook friends will be able to see your viewing history as part of a "Friend's favorites" list on both the Netflix website and app, and also be able to look up what you, specifically, have watched lately.

By default it will be only viewable within Netflix itself, but it can be made to be shown on Facebook by changing the settings on the Social opt-in that will become available by Friday.

Another one of the problems perceived is that each Netflix account will be linked to just one Facebook account. Because it's common for spouses, roommates or families to share one Netflix account, it does not make too much sense to tie all movie activity to an individual.

This is not the end of social features on the popular movie site -- Netflix is reportedly looking into other social features, including Twitter and a "share" button directly inside video streams.