Networking a printer and security

[tc17]

I've always heard that having file sharing on is a security risk, but does this also apply to sharing a laser printer through a hardware router. I only want to share it with another person in the same house. Or is there a security risk with that?

I'm very computer literate, but new to networking.

Thank you for any reply.

 

[skyking]

Sharing a printer is not too big a deal. sharing a few specific files is not usually a problem either.
The big problems occur when someone gets lazy, and shares out the entire C: drive, because they do not want to remember to put the files they wish to share in the shared folder. Now, anyone who can get on your LAN can see everything on your machine, and change it. If they hack into machine A, they can essentially destroy machine B at will.