Safety in hotel hotspots

[Jeff]

When I travel with my laptop I sometimes link to the internet using the
hotel room's hotspot. I have ZoneAlarm and Antivirus on my laptop and
nothing is visible for my laptop in its "My Network\...." except

"Printers and Faxes" and
"Scheduled Tasks", which only contains a "Add Task wizard".

These two are visible only on the laptop itself, but do not appear when I
view the laptop on my home network. The only thing about the laptop that
appears elsewhere on my wireless home network is the laptop's name. Because,
"Printers and Faxes" and "Scheduled Tasks" are visible within the laptop's
"My Network" where nothing else of the laptop files is visible, I am not
sure it that means they are somehow shared on an open network which gives me
some concern.

Questions:
1. I never have any printers directly attached to my laptop (I print on
network printers at home). But I can find no way to _Un Share_ "Printers and
Faxes". Is it necessary to do so? How?

2. Same question concerning "Scheduled Tasks".

3. What else can I do to maintain security on my laptop when I use it to
link to open hotel hotspots?

Thanks.

--

Jeff Stevens
Email address deliberately false to avoid spam

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

Jeff wrote:
> When I travel with my laptop I sometimes link to the internet using
> the hotel room's hotspot. I have ZoneAlarm and Antivirus on my laptop
> and nothing is visible for my laptop in its "My Network\...." except
>
> "Printers and Faxes" and
> "Scheduled Tasks", which only contains a "Add Task wizard".
>
> These two are visible only on the laptop itself, but do not appear
> when I view the laptop on my home network. The only thing about the
> laptop that appears elsewhere on my wireless home network is the
> laptop's name. Because, "Printers and Faxes" and "Scheduled Tasks"
> are visible within the laptop's "My Network" where nothing else of
> the laptop files is visible, I am not sure it that means they are
> somehow shared on an open network which gives me some concern.
>
> Questions:
> 1. I never have any printers directly attached to my laptop (I print
> on network printers at home). But I can find no way to _Un Share_
> "Printers and Faxes". Is it necessary to do so? How?
>
> 2. Same question concerning "Scheduled Tasks".
>
> 3. What else can I do to maintain security on my laptop when I use it
> to link to open hotel hotspots?
>
> Thanks.


You would be better served by posting this in the XP Security group -
microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin.
--
In memory of MS MVP Alex Nichol: http://www.dts-l.org/