OT: Alternate Data Streams

[Arkcon]

Now I'd seen something similar, and I wonder if it was the same thing. I use a tiny, efficient, command-line defragmenter called DIRMS. When I ran it on my sister's Dell laptop, I saw dozens of the folder hidden thumbnail files (Gak, big win XP waste of space and resources) displayed like: Thumbs.db:encryptable

I wonder if it has anything to do with this? And why would Dell have to do something like this? This was before she was on the net, so I don't think it was malicious.