Think about all of the web sites you shop on. How many of them have household accounts? How many of them limit accounts to one per household? How many of them assume that you have no connections to other people, at all? Some people are starting to figure it out. Maybe the people behind these companies have grown up and gotten married.

Netflix limits you to one free trial per address, which has irked many of my friends living with roommates. Even with the account that my wife and I share, until a couple of weeks ago, we had to share the same queue and our movie ratings were mixed together. We were a virtual individual with very odd ratings. Now, Netflix has profiles: my wife and I still share an account, but Netflix is smart enough to separate my activity and ratings from hers. I even get my own login, now, and I see my name at the top of the screen instead of hers. I don’t have to endure any more recommendations in Musicals and can get right to the Steve McQueen movies like God intended.

Amazon Prime, the new “all you can ship” subscription service, let’s me share my membership with anyone in my household (which I guess is the same thing as address). Although I paid the $79 annual fee, my wife gets the benefit even when she orders from her own account.

Of course, my online bank has been doing this for years. It knows the difference between my joint accounts and our personal accounts. My wife looks at our bank account online and sees her accounts along with our joint accounts, but when I look, I see my accounts and the joint accounts. When we log in, we see our own names.

Our T-Mobile account is almost there, but not quite. It knows that I have a different phone number, but even though we’re in a family plan, all the numbers have my wife’s name on them. That really doesn’t bother me, but shouldn’t a “family” account be able to handle more than one person?

In our TiVo account, I still have to pretend to be my wife, although with the internet that doesn’t involve any costumes or wigs. It’s the same thing with or broadband, TV, and phone service. Since I’m not the name on the bill, there is no way for me to directly complain when the service is out (although I just use my wife’s name and they don’t seem to care).

Who else is smart about this?