I'm willing to bet it's conjecture. Someone probably said "We need to hide . and .." and then realised "hey, if we need to hide these things we'll probably need

I'm willing to bet it's conjecture. Someone probably said "We need to hide . and .." and then realised "hey, if we need to hide these things we'll probably need to hide other things as well - how about we just hide anything that starts with .?"