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I'm a little concerned that I have a bunch of drives from other people's computers showing up in Finder whenever I'm at a company site. I don't plan to access those at all.

I have sharing disabled, yet they still appear. How can I block their being detected?

And is there any security risk in their showing up? I ask because I noticed that one of these drives, without my asking at all, showed up in my Dock!

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Consider finding, or creating, separate questions about security; and about the appearance in Dock. – Graham Perrin Apr 9 '12 at 18:48
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Is this OS X Lion? – Graham Perrin Apr 10 '12 at 3:47

3 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

OS X uses Bonjour to allow you and your computer to discover services offered by compatible networked devices.

Amongst Finder's uses of Bonjour: show which other devices are able to share their volumes with you. Simply browsing the list of computers will not make any significant connection.

If you choose to access the shared data of a computer other than your own, there should be no risk to data on your own computer. If you choose to run a shared application, Finder should present an alert.

Without blocking detection, Finder preferences allow you to not view Bonjour computers in the sidebar:

Whatever your preference for the sidebar, the main Finder view of the network (Command-Shift-K) will remain comprehensive.

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Thanks but how can I turn off Bonjour? – Mithras Apr 9 '12 at 15:14
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You can't really - it's built-in to the OS. Also, you wouldn't want to really, as it's used by many other parts of the OS and applications e.g. to find printers and to find devices to stream music and video to. You best be is just to ignore the fileshares that others are offering. – Diggory Apr 9 '12 at 15:16
up vote 2 down vote

Do you use Lion and if so, have you ever installed a "profile"? A .profile file may:

  • assist with things such as connection to the network(s) of the organisation
  • additionally include reconfiguration of Dock
  • be delivered through an organisation's web site, or through a captive portal before using a web browser
  • be delivered to you via e-mail from that organisation.

Has an administrator bound your computer to the directory server of an organisation? Some types of binding result in additions to Dock.

If it showed up automatically in your Dock, it sounds less like Bonjour, and more like a Network Mount. If this is the case, it's probably intentional - ask your sysadmin.

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This is my personal Mac. They may be aware of my MAC address, but not because I ever told them-- I connect via Ethernet. – Mithras Apr 10 '12 at 14:20
If you are using OS X 10.5 or earlier, you can wind up bound to the server automatically (using DHCP). Are you sure this fileshare popped up automatically in the Dock? Unless you're using a "managed" computer, or have dragged the volume to the Dock yourself, this seems pretty strange. – username Apr 10 '12 at 14:34
up vote 1 down vote

Sharing is an outgoing setting. By disabling sharing, you prevent your computer, and it's volumes, from appearing on the network. Disabling sharing on the other computers will prevent them from being seen.

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