Bonjour is sometimes misunderstood to make services on a personal computer (for instance, file sharing) available to the public Internet, which could be considered a security risk. In fact, Bonjour does not provide any extra access to services, even on the same local area network (LAN); it merely announces ("advertises") their existence. For example, a user can browse a list of nearby computers which share files�Bonjour on these computers has told the user that the service is available�but he or she must still provide a password to access any protected files on these machines. Additionally, Bonjour works only in a close range; by default, its messages only reach users of the same link. Thus, the only security impact of Bonjour is that advertised services are no longer protected by security through obscurity on the local network. If the services are protected through a means other than obscurity, they will remain protected.