Disney+ Hotstar is phasing out passwords for login authentication, saying that some of its users' accounts were compromised because of "data breaches on other platforms", the company said in emails to users that it started sending at least earlier this month. The company did not go into details of what exactly these breaches were. A copy of Hotstar's email to users is shared below. Will this have an impact on password sharing? In all probability, Hotstar will benefit from premium users facing more friction in sharing their accounts with others, as OTP-based authentication requires account holders to provide a new code for each login. This approach makes password sharing, while not impossible, much more burdensome. Hotstar blames weak and reused passwords Some users have been complaining to Hotstar about their accounts being compromised for some time now. Hotstar has been responding to them that reused or weak passwords were causing these incidents, not a breach on their own servers. The company has been providing this templated response to users since May 2019, when their current head of information security, privacy and trust joined the company. https://twitter.com/hotstar_helps/status/1274663831730630658 The company has not been allowing new accounts to be created with email addresses since February, Gadgets 360 had reported. It is unclear if any of the breaches cited by Hotstar came from organisations that were working with the OTT platform; Dunzo disclosed a breach earlier this month where vulnerabilities on third party platforms exposed their users' data. We have reached out to Hotstar…
