If Netflix thought they could quietly update their policy to crack down on password sharing and no one would notice, they were sadly mistaken.

The company is now reversing course on a newly-implemented policy that punishes accounts that share passwords between households, claiming that the feature wasn’t supposed to be live in countries outside of Chile, Costa Rica and Peru.

But it seems more likely that it was a big swing and a miss for the streaming giant, who faced intense online backlash after the new policy was revealed.

It’s been known for some time that Netflix was testing a policy and technology that would limit or eliminate password sharing, but the roll-out left many with furious questions.

Such as – what happens to people who travel often, or college students living away from home?

Netflix, rather than answering those questions, issued a mea culpa and deleted the policy for users in the US.

For now.