Crawling the Network with Windows XP

Just discovered the nastiest spy-ware from Microsoft so far. How come that all Windows XP computers per default will crawl the local network to find as many network shares and network printers as possible, and then add them?

By accident I saw that I had three new printers added - all prefixed by 'Auto'. Took a short while before I found out that it was due to the fact that my computer was adding them. Going to My Network Places I found around a dozen shares (to which I had access) added - neither of which I had never visited before... wonder if I shall print something to exhaust the ink supply of the HP DeskJet 870Cxi I just found...

Seemingly more important than ever to turn off sharing, atleast on anything that you don't want the world to abuse... and then again to turn off this silly 'crawl the local network for resources' feature(?!) of Windows XP.