Addappt now lets you hide specific contact information from your friends

Addappt is adding enhanced privacy controls to its contact management solution. The company has released new features that let you manage what information is shared with your friends, whether they’re using the service or not. Now you can mark specific fields as private, block people from seeing your information, and easily transmit their contact data in multiple ways.

Launched in 2012, Addappt wants to replace your existing address book with something more in line with how we use technology today. It takes into account the frequency with which we swap devices, whether from iPhone to iPhone or iPhone to Android, and makes it easy to import contacts without having to manually enter them.

Perhaps the main benefit of Addappt is its auto-syncing of your contact information. If you make a tweak to it, whether to your phone number, address, or other information, the app will make that same change in its app on other devices where your name appears.

As part of this mechanism, users have more control over their privacy. Starting today, you can select which fields (or “properties”) you wish to share with specific individuals. Don’t want to pass along your birthday to everyone you know? Mark it as private. The properties that currently exist on a friend’s phone will be removed from their device.

If a friend becomes annoying or the relationship goes sour, you can opt to block them from seeing your information. They may still have your phone number, but Addappt will not send them any additional information, nor will you be able to see theirs. You can also delete multiple contacts with just one tap.

For any friends who are not using Addappt, the app now lets you share updates through a vCard, email, or text. It’s important to note that only the content you’ve marked as “shared” from your contact information will be passed along using the vCard, which will respect the privacy settings you have in the app.

Addappt said that its iOS app has a special update, specifically the ability to personalize profiles with specific contacts. As chief executive Mrinal Desai told VentureBeat: “Users have given us feedback that they often have multiple contacts for themselves and would like to be able to just pick one or the other. For example, one might have a personal additional contact for themselves that lists all their past residences, vacation homes, etc. that they do not wish to share. They can now easily pick another without that information.”

Desai sought to reiterate that Addappt still does not store anyone’s address book on the company’s servers and won’t spam contacts with invites to use the app.

To take advantage of these added features, you’ll need to update your Addappt iOS and Android app.

Update: This post has been corrected in regards to use of the vCard where only the information you mark as “shared” will be included and that your privacy settings still apply.