A Netflix subscription will set you back between $7.99 and $11.99 per month, but stolen lifetime subscriptions to the popular streaming service are available for as little as 50 cents on the Internet.

The incredible -- and illegal -- offer is the result of hackers who take control of legitimate users' passwords, the Daily Star reported. It is made available through the so-called Dark Web, a part of the World Wide Web that is not indexed by search engines, the Daily Express explained.

Experts recommend that paying Netflix customers take a number of simple steps to ensure that they are, in fact, the only ones getting a bang for their buck. On the Have I Been Pwned service, for instance, users can check whether their details have appeared in any recent leaks or breaches.

The site contains some 154 million leaked records and searches that might generate a match with a user's email address, the Daily Express pointed out.

Netflix subscribers may also need to take action if they notice movies or series in their Recently Watched list if they did not watch those items. The best way to take immediate action in that case would be to navigate to the service's Account page and click on the "Sign Out Of All Devices" button.

The final step would then be to change the password associated with the account, a move that the Daily Star said might be prudent from time to time even in the absence of concrete warning signs.

The massive and inexpensive sale of stolen Netflix user data was first discovered by McAfee Labs, whose researchers looked into all kinds of personal data available on the Dark Web, the Daily Mail detailed.

Raj Samani, the chief technology officer for Intel Security EMEA, told the magazine that this obscure marketplace continues to expand.

"Like any unregulated, efficient economy, the cybercrime ecosystem has quickly evolved to deliver many tools and services to anyone aspiring to criminal behavior," Samani warned. "This 'cybercrime-as-a-service' marketplace has been a primary driver for the explosion in the size, frequency, and severity of cyber attacks," the expert added.