Linux Mint Guest on another computer?

[halcyonGray]

Hello everyone. This is my first post here. I just booted Mint on my computer for the first time today after deciding it would be an upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10. My problem is this: My housemate has a Macbook, running os10, and on her finder you can see "Linuxmint" as a guest... I don't want anything about my computer visible elsewhere. How do I fix this? Very step-by-step would be could, because at the moment I can hardly maneuver through this OS. Thanks

[DrHu]

If you are going through a common device/router --> to an ISP, there isn't anything you can do to prevent others on the same LAN from seeing available devices (computers)

Otherwise firewall and don't share any printers..

[halcyonGray]

If you are going through a common device/router --> to an ISP, there isn't anything you can do to prevent others on the same LAN from seeing available devices (computers)

Otherwise firewall and don't share any printers..

Is there a security risk with this? Can other people somehow get into my computer? When using Windows 7 I don't have this problem at all... And I don't think I can see her Mac anywhere.

[DrHu]

Security risk, what security risk

First you want know whether or not other people can see your computer, if they can, there will be no intruder alert coming from your system to tell you you are being watched..
--open wireless is a good example of this, almost anyone can spoof or monitor a users computer and obtaining their account details and passwords when they login to social networks, and possibly change or takeover their user profiles..

That's a security risk..
Having your computer name appear on someones browser/file manager isn't

The way you find computers/devices is via pings to an IP address range, or you can simply use a wireless or network monitor application if it makes it easier..
--web sites sometimes ignore pings (ICMP), but most home users don't

Both what is returned (the devices echo, a ping) and what isn't (the device gap tells the monitor where the device is or might be!

If you are concerned about security, you might consider a security intrusion detection tool, a rootkit checker, and looking at your system logs every so often + a firewall (IPTABLES), it is started automatically in Ubuntu/mint (ufw)
http://sectools.org/tag/ids/

[halcyonGray]

So basically it is like this:

It labels it as the "server linuxmint". On the top right of her window there is a "connect as" button. When it is clicked, it says connect to server linux mint as (radio button) 1. Guest or 2. Registered user. Then it asks for the username and password.

[halcyonGray]

Bumping. Can anyone describe the reason for the situation described in the comment directly above?