Change edubuntu's default permissions?

[Joseph Bishay]

Hello,

So today we just realized that everyone on our server can navigate into everyone else's /home directory and open all their files!

Looking online it appears this is ubuntu's default permission setting. This is rather strange and a disaster for us as teachers have private student marks, comments, tests etc the student can access now!

So my first question - is there a script or simple command to change all the permissions so everyone can only access their own files?

Second - how to permanently fix this so new accounts don't inherent this weird permission structure!

Thank you kindly!
Joseph 

P.S. This is a really strange default setup - I've been getting irate emails from staff and admin wondering what kind of system (ie: Linux) would allow students to access teacher folders etc. Hopefully the fix is simple and fast so I can pass it off as something minor. Thanks!