Microsoft has axed an application that let users create
a password protected folder just days after its launch, following
concerns raised by corporate users.
Private Folder 1.0 for Windows XP was launched quietly last week
as a free Windows Genuine Advantage download, designed to let users
set up a password protected folder to store confidential data.
But all references to the application have now vanished from the
software giant’s Windows Genuine Advantage “offers” webpage,
although it is still accessible by searching the main Microsoft
website.
Microsoft described Private Folder 1.0 as “a useful tool for you
to protect your private data when your friends, colleagues, kids or
other people share your PC or account”.
But business users feared staff could use the application to
encrypt data and make it inaccessible. Commenters on the
independent MSBlog website expressed incredulity that Microsoft had
not thought through the consequences.
One poster, Stuart Graham, criticised Microsoft’s “sloppy
release” of a product without documentation or enterprise
management facilities. He asked, “Have they even thought about the
impact this could have on enterprises?”
He added, “I’m already trying to frantically find information on
this product so that A, I can block to all our desktops and
B, figure out how we then support it when users inevitably lose
files.”
Network administrator Richard Staley added that the application
would cause “chaos” in a corporate environment. “Now I may have to
contend with a disgruntled user placing a time-bomb in a private
folder that the Domain Admins cannot access,” he wrote.
Microsoft refused to comment on either the launch or the removal
of the Private Folder application.
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