“Publishers” generate individual QR codes which may be either displayed on a smartphone or printed on a physical label, and “consumers” scan and decode those codes for secure and private communication with the publishers, without either party knowing the phone number or email address of the other party. At least one profile associated with the publisher may be an anonymous profile that permits the disclosure of only a specified subset of the otherwise available information about that publisher, and that information is not directly embodied in the displayed code, but rather is stored on a secure remote server which is selectively accessible by the consumer. If both parties have not authorized the release of their respective names and phone numbers (or other public contact information) to the other party by exchanging respective public profiles within a predetermined time period, any associated temporary contact numbers may be disabled and any anonymous contact information may be deleted from the remote server. A remote app on the publisher’s smartphone may be used to generate the QR code and upload the associated contact information and permissions to the secure server, and a local app on the consumer’s smartphone may be used to scan and process the QR code and commence secure and private communication with that publisher via the secure server.