"If any parts of the disk drives on the network are set to share, those stealing your Internet can use them just like you can."By default any shared folders are set to "read only" and in my vast experience in this field most 'regular people' leave default settings alone. So someone on the outside can read your material in your 'public/shared' folders, but that's all. I haven't found any programs who's default settings when saving files is one of the public/shared folders. Nearly everything is saved by nature in Users/Username/whatever and anything at the Users/Username level or below is secure from anyone without your userid/password.
Of course neophytes can go into admin programs and change these folders to 'shared' folders. They can even allow others write/delete permissions, but an experience person won't, and a neophyte is usually to scared to change default settings, let alone purposefully allow an unknown person the ability to 'delete' their data. For the heck of it I looked in the public folders on a machine of mine that must be close to 8 years old and after all this time, the only thing I found was initially loaded by Windows as example pictures/video/music. Nothing else.
As I understand this thread ChocChip's BIL does NOT have any unwanted material on his computer. The CP is on the neighbor's PC. The only person known to us to have compromised a network is the BIL. Come to think of it, the only person we know for a fact to have viewed this porn is the BIL.
The part about the some of the neighbor's folders being mapped on the BIL's machine is simply bullshit. It can't happen unless someone of the BIL's machine mapped them. The neighbor may have mapped some of BIL's folders, but the BIL would have NO WAY of knowing that. That is... there is no possible situation where one will log onto his own machine and magically notice a couple of brand new drives or mapped folders in MY COMPUTER.
To the poster than claimed anything viewed on BIL's computer is stored on his computer... well you're just wrong. A correct statement would be anything viewed with a browser is stored, but who views the contents of their computer or network using a browser instead of EXPLORER.EXE. I'm not talking Internet Explorer the browser I'm talking about Explorer the built in navigation system and the heart and soul of Windows. It does NOT make images of files in a temp directory before displaying them.
To the poster that mentioned destroying the router and waiting for the lease to expire before hooking up a new one... You are the closest to a viable solution. You also need to destroy your cable modem. But good luck destroying the records at your ISP, they know exactly what mac addresses were attached to their equipment and exactly at what time any traffic to/from that address occurred. It's like rearranging your house numbers and then telling the postman that he never delivered any porn to your front door. You can make the case that one of your kids' friends had a laptop and it was sending/receiving the vast bulk of traffic to and from your house over the years, but good luck selling that one.
As far as the "it's on your computer so you're guilty" people out here... you're nuts. Anyone can send you email with attachments. That doesn't make you guilty of squat. All it does is offer an opportunity for some Stephen King wannabe to make up an anecdote about Mary Poppins and Mr. Rodgers doing 15 to 20 in Attica. Fifteen to twenty years ago I'd receive dozens of emails with porn in them. Most people active on the net did, and it's the main reason most people became enraged with spammers and we have been 95% successful at filtering out these spammers.
To the people who have innocent friends breaking rocks for the next 15 years because they downloaded some music and the feds shot gas grenades and flash-bangs through their Anderson windows. Let me give you a clue. Your friends were knowing UP-loading illegal porn and doing it for quite a while. (or selling crack cocain) What do you expect them to say to you when they get their heads pushed down into the backseat of a black & white? "Hey I was knowingly, proudly and lustfully distributing porn."
To ChocChip: Your original paragraph said: "My sister-in-law and brother-in-law discovered that a neighbor has been tapping into their unsecured wireless internet connection. They've discovered 8-10 folders of photos accessible through their network that do not belong to them. (My BIL discovered this a few days ago when he wasn't able to get an internet connection and went searching for his wireless connection.) Some are general family photos of camping trips, their home, etc., but there are numerous photos that can only be described as all-male kiddie porn. Tonight my husband took steps to delete access to the folders that had been mapped to their computer and secure their network."
Now I have no reason to believe any of this to be false, but that's where I have the problem and so should you.
Never will a user of machine A find folders from machine B mapped to machine A's namespace, unless a user with direct control of the operating system on machine A mapped these external drives/folders to the namespace of machine-A. Someone on machine-A can go poking around on machine-B and find these folders if they happen to be shared, but still the person on machine-A is the one making the effort to find these folders by poking around on some other persons PC.
That may sound like a bunch of bull-o-knee, but keep reading it until you understand it and then do some serious thinking about that.