C2M: Open and Decentralized Cloud Contact Management
Sebastian Göndör, Jeshurun Devendraraj · Procedia Computer Science · 2013
The task of allowing people to easily synchronize contact details of acquaintances between different devices and applications over the Internet has led to the rise of cloud-based address repositories, where users can synchronize the local contact database of a device or application with a central server. Anyhow, such systems requires each user to maintain a distinct contact database on his own, resulting in multiple copies of each person's contact information. As these copies need to be manually maintained, typographical errors and outdated data records are hard to be found or deleted, which is why constant maintenance effort is required in order to stay up to date. These issues have been addressed by cloud-based contact management systems such as Cloudtact, which allow users to store one's contact details on a central server, which is then used to share the user profiles with other users of the same service. Although systems like Cloudtact update probably outdated or erroneous information by synchronizing with the owner's profile, their users are forced to entrust their data to the respective system's operator, thus creating a lock-in effect that disallows other systems to synchronize contact information. To overcome this problem and to promote a heterogeneous ecosystem without any lock-in effects, we propose Cloud Contact Management (C2 M), an open and decentralized profile management system that facilitates its users to host their own profile information on arbitrary federated servers. Therefore, contact details are only stored at one single location and controlled and maintained solely by the respective owner. Clients may be synchronized in order to stay up to date, while the profile owner may grant or deny access to his data on an individual, fine grained level. The proposed protocol is based on HTTPS and employs JSON to exchange data.