In this week's Newsbytes, I mentioned Microsoft's Private Folder 1.0, which is one of the perks for submitting to XP verification via Windows Genuine Advantage.
Following an outcry from corporate customers, Microsoft is removing an add-on feature to Windows that allowed users to create password-protected folders.
The feature was introduced as a free download last week. Almost immediately, people raised questions over how businesses would grapple with the ability of individual workers to encrypt their data.
On Friday, CNet quoted Microsoft as saying: "we are removing the application today".
Well, if there's a serious outcry from corporate buyers, I can certainly see Microsoft withdrawing an application. However, if these corporate buyers have yet to discover the Group Policies editor, their staff can probably download any number of free or cheap equivalents.
Indeed, some company staff may already have discovered that they can just ZIP or RAR or otherwise compress anything they want to keep secret, and password protect it. Or they may just upload stuff to a personal Gmail account or a similar web-based mail service that offers one or two gigabytes of storage, to avoid getting beaten up by IT staff enforcing a 100MB (or whatever) storage limit.
At the time of writing, Private Folder 1.0 is still available here, though it has been removed from http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/offers/
