You’ve heard me and others in the tech industry preaching about the dangers of public wifi for years, but there’s something that you may not have realized.

Your laptop may be sharing information with anyone else connected on the coffee shop or hotel wifi you’re using without you realizing it.

If your laptop is setup with default or public shares, you may be inadvertently allow others to access or even save files on your computer.

In general, this won’t really impact your personal data, but technically your computer is accessible by any random stranger connected to the same public wifi.

As a precaution, if you never use the public share folder to share files with others, turn it off.

I’ve seen situations where sensitive files have been stored in these publicly accessible folders because the user didn’t realize the whole world could access these folders.

Both Windows and Mac users have these public share folders turned on.

Disable public shares in OS X

Disable public folders in Windows