Windows Private Folders

[fooby]

Microsoft Released Private Folder 1.0 for Windows XP

Posted By Bink on July 6, 2006 at 2:01 PM

 

Microsoft have released Private Folder 1.0, which lets you have a folder called ‘My Private Folder’ which you can password protect.

 

Microsoft Private Folder 1.0 is a useful tool for you to protect your private data when your friends, colleagues, kids or other people share your PC or account. With this tool, you will get one password protected folder called ‘My Private Folder’ in your account to save your personal files.

 

You can grab a copy of it HERE (However this requires a “Genuine” version of Windows-As most free Microsoft software requires now days.)

 

Microsoft then promptly pulled the download

 

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.

 

"Private Folder 1.0 was designed as a benefit for customers running genuine Windows," Microsoft said in a statement to CNET News.com on Friday. "However, we received feedback about concerns around manageability, data recovery and encryption, and based on that feedback, we are removing the application today. This change will take effect shortly."

 

When it added the feature, Microsoft touted it as "a useful tool...to protect your private data when friends, colleagues, kids or other people share your PC or account."

 

However, others spotted potential problems.

 

"Oh great, have they even thought about the impact this could have on enterprises. 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. I can see the benefit in this product for home users, but it's a bit of a sloppy release by Microsoft," Stuart Graham said in a posting on Windows Server-related site MSBlog.

 

 

 

It is still available for download - however before it was lost forever I grabbed it here.

 

 

Download here...

http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/offers/Details.aspx?displaylang=en&countrycode=USA&offerid=441c2998-248b-49cf-b084-f3a237b58f71

 

Or see attached.

 

fooby

 

P.S Note to Admin - we might not be able to re-distribute this here after Microsoft officially pull it from their website.

mspf10enu.msi

[NetworkGeezer]

The question is why do you want this?

 

The reason why this was pulled was because IT Managers around the web said that there was no means of recovery if the user lost/forgot their password.

 

It might also be illegal for orginisational use.

 

EFS is a more practical solution.

[Geoff]

There's lots of ways of not being able to recover EFS encrypted data too. My favorite is if you choose 'reset' a users password instead of 'changing' it.

 

Oh, it's also insecure. It doesn't encrypt on the wire. User passwords under 20 characters result in weak hashes which can be attacked either directly (in the case of LM Hashes) or with Ranbow tables (in the case of NTLM hashes).