Simple, advanced, hidden and secure file sharing on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1

5. Create a hidden network share

One way to secure your network shares a little better is to add the $ suffix.
To do this, create a new folder and right-click "Properties" on it.
Then, go to the "Sharing" tab and click on the button : Advanced Sharing.

Check the "Share this folder" box and add a "$" at the end of the share name.

As you can see by clicking on the "Permissions" button, by default, everyone will have a read right.

Note that under Windows 8, it isn't possible to connect anonymously to a hidden share, even if you allow reading for the "Everyone" group.

Click OK to close this window.

In our case, Windows tells us that our shared folder will be accessible via this network path : \\INFORMATIWEB-PC\hidden-share$

As expected, this one doesn't appear in the network shares of this computer.

Nevertheless, if we know the name of this network share, we can access it without problem (without password in our case).

Note : under Windows 8 and 8.1, you will need to create of a network drive.
For it :
- open the Windows file explorer
- right-click "Connect a network drive" on "This PC"
- specify the path of this network share
- follow these steps to connect to it with an account (with password) present on the remote PC : 6.5. Access the shared folder