Shared Folders?

[JML42691]

After a quick search, I yielded no results and I am hoping that somebody here will be able to help. At home I am using a secure connection and when I go to view other machines on my network, everything is correct and I only see the shared files on my family's PCs. But when I go to my school in the day, the school's network is public and I can see other devices. This morning I looked on the other devices part and accidentally clicked on another person's computer and realized that I was able to see their songs in iTunes and possibly be able to play them (classes were about to start and didn't want to explore much further as I felt that I was invading someone's privacy). My being new to Macs (just got mine on Monday) and I want to make sure that when I am on the school's network that other people won't be able to view my files/songs like I was able to view theirs. Would they normally be able to do this already, or are the default security settings already preventing this? And am I able customize the security settings so that I am able to share when I am home [on my secure network] and not share when I am on the school's network? Or is this an easier change to do as soon as I log on to each network?

 

[Makosuke]

Generally speaking, with default settings and file sharing turned on, people can only connect to and browse your computer if they know (and enter) the username and password of an account on that computer that has permission to view those files. Meaning, for the most part, no.

Are you sure you weren't just using the iTunes sharing feature? That's separate from file sharing, and allows others to browse and play unprotected songs in your iTunes library from another computer running iTunes that's on the same subnet. Which, in the case of most schools, is the entire school network.

That's easy enough to turn off, or you can also require a password to browse/play--in both cases it's in iTunes Sharing preference section. For example, the University network where I work you can see probably a dozen people's iTunes libraries, and it's entirely intentional--they're just being generous.

So generally speaking, unless you've gone out of your way to do so, the most anybody can do without knowing the login info for your Mac is play your songs. If the person you'd connected to was allowing full browsing of their drive without any password, that's rather surprising (and rather stupid).

 

[JML42691]

Thanks, I'm not entirely sure of what happened, but if there was a problem or issue I'm assuming that it was mostly if not entirely on the part of the other person.