Netflix streaming service announced Monday that they have plans to increase the price of new memberships by one or two dollars, depending on the account owners' country according to Entertainment Weekly. This price hike is a measure which is set to take effect "later this quarter," the company wrote in a letter to investors. However, existing members will be allowed to stay at their current pricing ($7.99 for Netflix account holders in the U.S.) for "a generous time period." However, they too will eventually be subject to the new higher price.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells wrote in the letter to investors: "These changes will enable us to acquire more content and deliver an even better streaming experience." The company also wrote about their "big hit" House of Cards, saying it "attracted a huge audience that would make any cable or broadcast network happy." However, they did not provide specific streaming numbers. Netflix added 4 million subscribers in the first quarter of the year, bringing its total subscribers to 48 million worldwide.
Current Netflix users may not experience the price hike, however they should watch out for scammers, which are becoming increasingly common. The Huffington Post reported about a clever phishing scam targeting Netflix users by encouraging them to contact scammers posing as customer service representatives. The scammers are drawing users to fake websites via sponsored ads purchased through major ad networks. These phony ads have been spotted at the top of search result pages on popular search engines including Bing and Google. "For months I've actually been using various search engines' sponsored ads to find new companies or any new variation with those scams. It's sad but if you do a search for 'tech support' in any of the major search engines you will most likely encounter an ad for a rogue company," Malwarebytes researcher Jerome Segura told HuffPost. "I think all major ad networks are affected, as well as ads that show within the content of certain websites."
