All users’ content in their home directories will be accessed and read by all. In some environments, this may not be a great way to manage users’ home directories. This brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to make sure all users created on a Linux system are created ensuring that their home directories are protected. Every time you run the adduser command, the defaults for the user are drawn from the /etc/adduser.conf file. All the configurations’ settings in that file are applied to all new accounts. If you want to prevent users from viewing each other home folder, you can edit that config file and make the changes there. So, to prevent world-readable permissions for all new users created on Linux systems, run the commands below to open the default adduser.conf file. Then change the line that reads: and change it to the line below Save the file and you’re done. After making those changes, every time you run the commands below to create a new account, the new settings will ensure that the user account isn’t readable by all. Only the admin or an account with sudo permissions enabled will be able to view content in other home directories Enjoy!
