SubscribePrevent Geeks at Work from Seeing Your Files Remotely
Posted on Nov 26, 2007 under Windows Tips |People still don’t like to believe that the tech’s at the helpdesk can see everything on their computer without actually being at the computer. If anybody has administrator rights, and most members of the company helpdesk do, as do many managers, they can see every file on the computer. Chances are, there is at least one person in your company that is fully willing to snoop around just for fun.
Administrators can access admin shares on your computer as long as the Server service is running. They can easily access the path on anybody’s computer using Start > Run and typing:
\\computername\c$
Try this on your own machine, and it will act the same. It opens the C drive on the computer using the admin share. Of course, you replace computername with the computer name of your own computer. You can also change c$ to d$ to see the files on the D drive of the computer.
The Server service is also used by many tools that administrators use to gather information about your PC, such as what software is installed on it, or what web sites you view. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the dude at the helpdesk to know I have an illegal copy of Office 2007 running on my PC.
If you have a computer at work and you don’t share files or a printer, disable the Server Service on your computer. You can do so, perform the following steps:
1. Right-click on My Computer and select Manage.
2. Expand Services and Applications.
3. Click on Services.
4. On the right side, find the Server service and double-click on it.
5. Switch the Startup type dropdown to Disabled.
6. Now when an admin tries to connect, they get:
Your helpdesk will likely not even bother to investigate why they cannot connect to your machine. Also they very rarely find the problem if they do bother.
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