Safety on a VPN?

[eTiMaGo]

Hello,

Due to some very very veeeery annoying restriction by my ISP, I have signed up for a public VPN. That's working fine, but I am just wondering about the safety of my computers. I have a lot of shared folders, to use on the home and office networks, so I just wanna know if they'd be accessibe by other ppl on the VPN? As far as I know there is no password protection on these folders, how can I set up the PCs so that only specified users can log onto them, and block other people?

Thanks,

Thomas

 

[bigstusexy]

Is it a public VPN or proxy? Either way the answer leans towards yes. I would invest in a good software firewall and use it.

As far as setting up passwords shares what version of windows?