Mystery Guest

Whitehill

Whitehill

Registered
I have an unsecured wireless network in my home. (I know, it's dumb. Tell me later.) As guests come and go with laptops, they connect to the network. All OK. That is, I'm used to seeing transitory nodes on my network.

Some time ago, a Bonjour computer appeared in the Shared section in the Sidebar of a Finder window. I have no idea what it is. When I click on it, it says XXXX YYYYYY's Computer, connected as: Guest. There is one folder there which, in turn, contains another folder named Drop Box.

Now, I use DropBox on my system, to keep my 3 Macs in sync on a few items. Works fine.

What is this mystery guest? Why is it here? How can I get rid of it?
 
That guest is a member (or recent member) of your wireless network that has simple file sharing turned on on their Mac. Could be a neighbor, could be a former guest on your network.

Can you successfully connect to their Drop Box? If so, that means that it is a currently-connected guest on your wireless network. As to who it is, that can't be determined. I would suspect a neighbor.

(Dropbox and Drop Box are two different things. Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage system, Drop Box is a folder that is shared by Mac OS X so that two users of a network can put files in each other's folders without having to have access to their folders via File Sharing)

To get rid of them, you have two options:

1) Secure your wireless network with a password and/or MAC filtering
2) Locate the guest and kindly ask them to not connect to your network
 
That's a new one for me. I never new about the OSX Drop Box; I do use the other. The guest seems to be the former. Anyhow, my closest neighbor is 900 feet away - that seems fringe, at best, for my Airport Extreme.
 
If you have the AirPort Extreme dual-band model, you can set up a separate, unprotected wireless network for guests -- they can access your internet connection, but your other computers connected to a secured network cannot be accessed. Seems like a good fit for your situation, which, as I understand it, is to simply provide easy internet access for guests.

I'm not sure if the "Guest network" is available in other models of the Airport Extreme. It doesn't look like it:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3477
 
Well, I found it. It was another Mac on my own LAN! It advertises itself via Bonjour as "XXX YYYY's Computer" and via ?? as "zzzz". Nothing I could find would relate the two. I called Apple Tech Support and they didn't have a clue. When I turned off that machine, the intruder disappeared. Live and learn.
 
It could be that whatever ?? is doesn't support certain characters in the computer name -- for example, the possessive single-quote mark (i.e., "Someone's computer").
 
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