Graham Perrin's Library tagged permissions → View Popular

19 Jul 09

20 Nov 06

"Mac OS X requires users to save documents to locations within their individual Home directories" but it doesn't prevent users from saving their documents to the top level of their home directory (which is, by default, visible to all other users). - grahamperrin on 2006-11-20

Mac OS X requires users to save documents to locations within their individual Home directories

When a Carbon, Cocoa, or Java application saves a document, the respective application environment automatically sets the permissions of the document as determined by the user’s umask value. For user documents, this value is set to (-rw-r--r--) by default, giving the owner read and write access but limiting other users to only read-only access.

anyone on the

system may read any file (except for mail files), whether or not it is

in their home directory

Access permissions for your home directory are usually
set to
rwx--x--x
or
rwxr-xr-x.

The top level ~/ of one's home directory is visible to anyone on the system. - grahamperrin on 2006-11-20
In Mac OS X, for example: to maintain privacy for your documents you should save them to ~/Documents - grahamperrin on 2006-11-20

You own your own home directory, and, by default, this is set so that
you can read, write, and execute it and everyone else can read and execute
it. The default for files inside your home directory is for you to read
and write them and everyone else to read them. If you want, you can use
chmod to change the protection on your home directory so that "others"
cannot read or execute your home directory, but this is not encouraged.
It is better to change the protection on individual files. If you do change
the protection on your home directory, you should maintain "execute" priviledge
for "others". This will not allow people to see the contents of your directory,
but it will allow some utilities like finger to work properly.
under default protection,
anyone on the system may read any file (except for mail files), whether
or not it is in their home directory, though only the actual owner of
the file may alter it. Directories are also, as a rule, open: others may
list the files in or connect to (though not alter) most directories.