Patent ID: 7440746

Claim:
A system for sharing contact information, said system comprising: (a) a central hub that maintains and distributes contact information; (b) plural terminals that electronically communicate with the central hub; and (c) plural contacts, each said contact having an associated contact record that is maintained by the central hub, wherein upon receipt of a contact-record request from one of the plural terminals, the central hub automatically transmits a matching contact record to the requesting terminal, wherein each of the plural terminals has an ability to retrieve any of the contact records maintained by the central hub for said plural contacts, but the central hub implements procedures to preclude mass downloading of contact information, and wherein said procedures to preclude mass downloading of contact information include at least one of: (i) limiting a number of matching contact records provided to a requesting end user, (ii) monitoring and restricting repeated broad searches conducted by a same end user, (iii) monitoring and restricting repeated similar broad searches conducted across multiple end users, (iv) correlating reports of junk email from the contacts with broad searches conducted by registered end users, and (v) requiring the contact-record request to include extra information regarding the matching contact record, in addition to information that uniquely identifies the matching contact record, in order to retrieve the matching contact record.