Towards Enhanced Presence Filtering

We live in a world of multiple communication channels which, on the face of it, should make persons more easily contactable. However, it can in fact be a time consuming process to establish contact due to these many avenues of communication. It is also true that many communication channels can equate to an increase in unwanted and disruptive communication attempts. The use of presence information is viewed as a possible solution to both the foregoing problems. This is achievable by persons making their presence information available for subscription by others, thus improving the communication experience of all concerned. However, there are many attributes denoting presence which are of a sensitive nature, and the release of such information needs to be tightly controlled to ensure it is released only to authorized persons. Current standards provide for the use of presence authorization rules to filter presence information and in so doing, provide the required access control. However the authors believe that shortcomings exist in this current approach. The intent of this paper is to investigate an alternative method of addressing availability through the use of, but not disclosure of sensitive information. Such a method could improve communication efficacy for both caller and callee, while reducing the release of privacy sensitive information.