Invisible File Shares - How and Why?

Did you know that file shares can be "invisible" on the network? Well, they can, but... do you actually want to do that? Does it offer any sort of benefit or additional security?

Well... not really. Not as much as people might think, anyway. Let's talk briefly about setting file shares to be "invisible," why people might do that, what they think it does, what it actually does, and why it might still be a useful idea after all...

EXTRA CREDIT:
The use of the dollar sign to "hide" a share is also used by the Windows built-in administrative shares, including C$, ADMIN$, and IPC$.
Yes, that means your computer is technically sharing your entire hard drive by default. NO, that doesn't mean you have to panic--there's still the Windows Defender Firewall in play, and you have to be a member of Administrators on the machine in order to access any of it. Again, hiding the share doesn't offer any security; permissions do. And these default shares are well-protected.
I wouldn't try to remove these default shares, either! That will break your Windows install in unexpected and hard-to-troubleshoot ways. Remember, you have to be a member of the local Administrators group in order to access these shares, so just make sure you don't have any untrusted accounts in that group and then make sure your password is a good one! :)