[IsmaOlvey]

The problem with Alternate Data Streams is interoperability. In many cases, the data will silently be lost when copying between different file systems and/or operating systems. I believe Windows itself will warn you when trying to perform an operation that would discard alternate data streams (for example copying from NTFS to FAT), but many tools would likely silently strip it.

Think of things like any of the cloud drives, bittorrent, screen-sharing or IM software. Are they aware of ADS (or equivalent for that platform). What would the right thing to do be when syncing between platforms that have support, and ones that do not?