Posted by VT_Syrup on 2/11/13 8:24am
Msg #455120

Image security hints for Windows 7

Windows 7 has a <sarcasm> wonderful </sarcasm> feature called Homegroup. If you click on a folder, then Share with, you find you can share a folder with Nobody. If you do that, you would figure nobody not on your computer can see it, right? Wrong. If it's a media file (I guess that means it's in a My Music, My Videos, or My Pictures folder) it will be shared with mobile devices (that is, smart phones) that are logged in to your home WiFi network. So does your scanner put scans in My Pictures? Did you take a photo of someone's driver license and did it end up in My Pictures? Opps...

To stop this wonderful behavior, click on Start and then your user name. "Homegroup" will be one of the options in the left-hand side of the window. Left-click and then lef-click View the "homegroup settings". Click to remove the checkmark on "Stream my pictures, music, and videos to all devices on my home network". Also consider unchecking the other boxes for things you don't want to share with computers on your network. I unchecked everything but Printers.

Reply by Bear900/CA on 2/11/13 10:20am
Msg #455135

Great info!

If it’s not in your left hand pane, go to Control Panel. It will be there also.

• I also went to Network Discovery (in Home Group) while there and turned off a bunch of stuff.

• Then to Media Streaming > Block All

I was amazed at the password they give you which only you can view, in case you do want to share with another computer you have on the same network.

It’s also good to log in as Administrator and password protect each user account.