Well, I'm guessing, but you sound like a Plaxo user who likes the
synchronization aspects of the service, but hates the contacts notification
aspects.
Am I right? If so, join the crowd!
Actually you can create additional folders for your contacts. And if this is
to keep a subset of contacts from being visible to services like Plaxo or
Trumba, you can move those contacts that you would like to keep private into
the new folder(s), and then check synchronization settings and ensure that
you select to NOT sync that folder(s).
Hope this helps, Jos.