If your computer is connected to a network domain is very likely that some of its resources are shared to everyone. Some of those resources are, Printers, shared documents etc. and in some cases the entire system drive. The good news is that you can prevent network access to your computer by tweaking the “Access this computer from a network“ option in the local security policy

To access Local Security Policy on a Windows XP or Vista computer go to Start click on Control Panel under control panel click on Administrator Tools then click on Local Security Policy. Once you are at Local Security Policy click on Local Policies then click on “User Rights Assignments“ look for “Access this computer from the network“ on the list and click on it.

Remove everyone and users, and if your want you can nuke off Back up operations also, so you only leave administrators on the list. Click on Apply and then OK.

network access

Local Security Policy has an immense wealth of ways to make your computer to be behave in certain ways, but the majority of people never get to that level of playing around with it, and I advice you shouldn’t either if you don’t know what you are doing because small changes in Local Security Policy can have great impact on your computer. Hopefully I will be posting more about Local Security stuff, so you know what the heck your doing when you get there.