With Private Folder 1.0 for Windows XP SP2, the Redmond Company seems to have shifted its views on user privacy. After exercising intrusion of customer intimacy on a global scale with its Windows Genuine Advantage tool, Microsoft is now offering a tool that aims at enforcing user intimacy. Private Folder 1.0 is meant to be implemented in enterprise environments in order for its users to benefit from a personal computer space. On copies of Windows shared by more persons a nook or cranny of personal space might be the right marketing incentive to convince the user to install such an application.

The add-on to Windows XP SP2 creates a password-protected "My Private Folder" for storing private documents and files. "It's a useful tool for you to protect your private data when your friends, colleagues, kids or other people share your PC or account," Microsoft said on the page dedicated to the new tool.

Moreover the tool is offered as a free download from Microsoft's website. But it requires the user to authenticate their Windows OS installation through the Windows Genuine Advantage program. Upon the installation, a special folder is placed on the desktop which can be password protected.

Microsoft Private Folder 1.0 has raised a few questions however regarding mainly the increase in corporate paranoia and data recovery in the eventuality that the user should lose the files.