Wireless network & security

I have a simple network at home which uses a wireless router as a hub and file/print sharing turned on. It works fine (2 WinXP Home machines)

But, if I take my laptop into the office and connect to the wireless network in there, will everyone be able to access my shared folders? - Or are the shares etc. specific to the workgroup/network/ssid ?

 

Everyone will be able to access your laptop's shared folders... though you could use Windows firewall to block that. Generally I recommend always leaving the wireless connection firewalled and disabling the firewall on the Ethernet connection if you have sufficient reason to do so (like file sharing) but that's not always convenient. Windows is insecure enough without connecting to a foreign wireless network without a firewall. At home you'll at least have WPA or WPA2 encryption enabled (right?).

 

Hmm... Okay, thanks for the reply. That's good to know. I have Windows firewall set up to limit file sharing to just the subnet. But if I connect to another network, then that becomes the subnet. I could always limit it at an IP address level I suppose....

And yes, I do have WPA enabled on the home router - I was detecting 2 unsecured networks in my area as it was!

What amazed me was that it wasn't enabled by default. I had to go in and configure it manually. It seems a lot of people don't bother to do this, or aren't aware that they should.

 

I've seen this complaint so many times, you'd think the companies would catch on. Maybe they could put a peel on sticker over the power button which says "Don't forget to secure your network!" and include a little instruction card on how. Personally I just use WEP because I play with Linux and Linux can't handle WPA yet, even though I know WEP is worthless. At least it says to a potential hacker that my network is somewhat secured while the 46 others in the neighborhood are not so they may as well go a few feet down the block and try again.

~ Brett