Ubuntu

Other users can see my files

Asked by guidemeintheeyesofblindness@yahoo.com

I install Ubuntu 9.10 and I share my computer with two other users including a nosy teenage daughter.

While browsing around I opened my "Home" folder I noticed I was able to access the desktop for other user accounts on this computer and they were able to access folders in my account.

How do I stop this from happening? How do I block our information from being seeing by others who use this computer?

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guidemeintheeyesofblindness@yahoo.com
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Revision history for this message
Ilya Barygin (randomaction) said : 		#1

You can easily revoke access to your home folder. One way to do it is to open a terminal and run this command:

chmod 700 ~

Or open /home in file manager (Nautilus) (/home is the folder which contains your home folder), right-click your home folder (its name is the same as your username), select Properties -> Permissions tab and set permissions for group and others to "none".

You can limit access to any folder you own. For example, you can leave your home folder open but lock specific files or subfolders. See manual page of "chmod" for more information. Also see "File system permissions" in Wikipedia.

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guidemeintheeyesofblindness@yahoo.com (guidemeintheeyesofblindness) said : 		#2

I opned a terminal and cut and pasted "chmod 700~ and nothing happened.

How do I "Open/home in file manager {Nautilus} ?

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Daniel Brook-Roberge (droberge) said : 		#3

You can get to the properties dialog for your home folder if you open it from the Places menu and then right click on any part of the blank space between icons in the contents area. The 'Permissions' tab will have a listing of the various permissions; to block other people from accessing your home folder make sure all of the 'Folder Access' entries are set to 'None' except the top one. (this will not protect other users on the computer as they would each have to do this; if you want to protect all of them at once the quickest way to do that would be to go into the terminal and type:

cd /home; sudo chmod 700 *

which will ask for your password to do the admin task)

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guidemeintheeyesofblindness@yahoo.com (guidemeintheeyesofblindness) said : 		#4

This worked thanks!!