Presence is an important technology on the Web, indicating a person's availability and willingness to communicate. As such it has great potential to reduce untimely disturbances and increase productivity, and is likely to become a universal feature in future communication networks. However, presence information can be highly sensitive and its distribution must be carefully managed to provide adequate privacy. To date most presence implementations only provide basic functionality and implementing additional features will add a lot of system and management complexity. In this paper we examine presence and provide an overview of how it works. We identify its shortcomings and suggest how a more useful presence system should behave. We then examine relevant informational privacy and social relationship theories to suggest an understandable solution based on everyday life. We also show a practical implementation of our solution in a popular presence standard. By approaching the problem, the complex management of presence, as we suggest it is easier for user's to understand and control the flow of their information. In addition, a person's contacts are also provided with a better understanding of his or her current context. In the process we also suggest several interesting avenues for future research.