Paramount+

Is Paramount+ safe?

For adults, yes. Paramount+ is a paid streaming app with licensed shows, films and live sport, and nobody can message you or your children through it. We score it 58/100, the same as Hulu and below HBO Max (62), which now has the same owner.

The weaker spots are tracking and account protection. Apple's label shows Paramount+ tracking you with more kinds of data than most streaming apps, parental controls are off until a parent finds the website setting, and there is no second step at login.

What Paramount+ tracks

The App Store label for Paramount+ has a "Data Used to Track You" section with four categories: purchases, location, contact info and identifiers. Disney+ lists only usage data there, and Netflix has no such section. Linked to your identity and used for third-party advertising are purchase history, coarse location, email address, user and device IDs, product interaction and advertising data. Precise location is collected too, though the label says it is not linked to you.

The Paramount privacy policy, last changed on 12 May 2026, covers all of the group's networks, sites and streaming services. It names "data licensors and aggregators, advertising networks, data analytics providers" as sources of data, and says partners help "track your activity across the Paramount Services, as well as Third-Party Services" to build profiles for personalised ads. Data is shared across the Paramount Skydance family of companies. In return, Paramount says it treats a Global Privacy Control signal from your browser as an opt-out, and that it does not knowingly sell or share data of anyone under 16.

The Google Play listing is confusing. It lists device IDs, name, email, user IDs and in-app activity as shared with other companies for advertising, and then, in the same section, says the developer does not collect user data.

Setting up parental controls

Paramount+ protects children in two ways: a PIN that locks ratings, and Kids profiles. A Kids profile is set to Younger Kids (TV-Y and G) or Older Kids (TV-Y7 and PG), and only shows titles up to that rating, according to independent guides from Bark and Screenwise. Parental controls are off by default. To switch them on, a parent goes to paramountplus.com/account in a web browser, enters the account password, creates a 4-digit PIN and picks the highest ratings to lock. Paramount+'s international help centre says the setting cannot be managed from the app or a TV device, and US guides give the same browser-only steps.

Once set, any title with a locked rating needs the PIN to play or download, on every device that uses the account, and the controls can be tuned per profile. There are gaps. Locked titles stay visible in every profile, so a child sees the artwork and titles they cannot play. The same PIN can stop a child from leaving a Kids profile, so set it before handing over a device; without it, a child can simply pick an adult profile. Anyone with the account password can reset the PIN on the website.

Account security

We found no reported breach of Paramount+ accounts. Protection is basic: a search of the help centre for two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary returns no results, so a password reused on another site, or caught by a phishing page, is enough to take over an account. We also found no active public bug bounty for Paramount or CBS on HackerOne or Bugcrowd.

The new owner

On 6 October 2026 Skydance Corporation, the company formed when Skydance merged with Paramount in 2025, completed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows. Paramount+ and HBO Max now sit in the same group, though each still has its own app, account and privacy policy. Any merger of the two services could change what data is shared between them, and we will re-check this page when it happens.

How to use Paramount+ safely

1. Turn on parental controls at paramountplus.com/account, choose a PIN and lock the ratings that are too old for your children.
2. Keep the account password from children, since it can reset the PIN.
3. Use a password you do not use anywhere else, because there is no two-step login.
4. Refuse the tracking prompt on iPhone, and use the Your Privacy Choices link or turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser.
5. Sign in only through the app or by typing paramountplus.com yourself, never from a link in a message.

How we scored it

The regulatory record (87) is Paramount+'s strongest factor, with no fine or order against the app. Scams and harmful content (72) comes next, thanks to licensed content and no contact between users, held back by controls that start switched off. Privacy (42) is the weakest: the label lists four kinds of data used for tracking and the policy adds data from aggregators. Security (57) reflects a clean breach record but no two-step login.