They stopped sharing Netflix password. Is family therapy next?

Chloe Bryan's father delivered the difficult news to his adult daughter and three of her siblings in a late May text message.

- Joseph Pisani

They were getting cut off dad's Netflix plan. "Luckily I had watched Selling Sunset' in absolutely record time," says Bryan, 30 years old, about the Netflix reality show that had just begun a new season.

Netflix in May heralded the start of a U.S. crackdown it has been talking about for more than a year. No longer can a Netflix account holder share passwords with far-flung freeloading family and friends. Now underway is the resulting tsunami of breakup talks.

"It sounds like I'm getting a divorce or something," says Jennifer Jones, of Fayetteville, N.C., who broke the news to her many Netflix hangers-on in a May Facebook post. "I'm so sorry," she wrote, "but I just couldn't keep sharing despite the fact that my momma raised me to share. Even she is now...cut off."

Jones, who is 42, then had deeper phone conversations with her mom and her brother during Memorial Day weekend and explained that it wasn't them, it was Netflix.

Netflix fans have long binged their favorite shows by sponging off others' accounts. Passwords have been shared by ex-lovers, co-workers, business partners, and lucky viewers who stumble into places with TVs where prior Network users forgot to log out.