User privacy

[Chris Green]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 04:35:57PM +0100, Volker Wysk wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 16.02.2021, 23:23 +0800 schrieb Bret Busby:
> > On 16/02/2021, Volker Wysk <post at volker-wysk.de> wrote:
> > > Hi
> > > 
> > > Am Dienstag, den 16.02.2021, 14:18 +0000 schrieb Ian Bruntlett:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > I'm sorting out an existing Lubuntu 18.04 laptop for a mother and
> > > > daughter. At the moment when I run umask I get the result "0002" which I
> > > > believe means that different users can read each other's files in their
> > > > $HOME directories. They want to stop each other from reading their files.
> > > > 
> > > > Now I have a rough idea on how to arrange this. I believe a different
> > > > umask value has to be specified however I don't know:-
> > > > * What value of umask to use
> > > > * Where to set that value so that it is set as the default on
> > > > bootup/login.
> > > 
> > > You don't need to touch the umask. Just delete the permissions for "others"
> > > on the home directories:
> > > 
> > > chmod o-rwx /home/HOMEDIR1
> > > chmod o-rwx /home/HOMEDIR2
> > > 
> > > Bye,Volker
> > > 
> > 
> > Is it "others" or "group"?
> > 
> > I preferred it when it was numbers; the 777 system, so, for example,
> > chmod 007
> 
> It's "others". Each user should have its own private group with the same
> name as the user name and only that user in it. So the group ownership or
> permissions should not be a problem.
> 
It always seems to be a rather strange default set-up to configure
every new user to have a group of their own.  It makes the whole idea
of groups in permissions rather redundant!

It *may* be a good idea to configure things so that, by default, files
don't have group read permission (i.e. umask 002, I *think*) but one
often *does* want to share files for reading and that requires that
users belong to some common groups.  They can then set group read
permission on files they want to share.

-- 
Chris Green