Patent ID: 7836147

Claim:
A method comprising: maintaining a first address book associated with a first user and a second address book associated with a second user, the first address book including contact information for one or more third party parties; receiving, from the first user, a request to copy the contact information from the first address book to the second address book; determining that a subset of the contact information is marked as private; forwarding, from the first user to the second user, the request to copy the contact information from the first address book to the second address book, the request excluding the subset of the contact information marked as private; receiving a confirmation from the second user in response to the request, the confirmation including a selection of a portion of contacts from the contact information; copying contact information for the selected portion of contacts from the first address book to the second address book in response to the confirmation, thereby providing the second user with access to the contact information for the one or more third party parties at the request of the first user; and notifying at least one of the first and second users that contact information marked as private has not been copied from the first address book to the second address book.