How to stop other users seeing my files?

I've just found out that the another user on my shared Mac can see all of my files and folders.

I am set up as an admin on the machine - the other user is set up with a named account with no admin rights.

They have shown me that they can access all of my folders and files including documents, pictures and music.

When I check under my profile, the folders are set to read and write access for me, and "no access" for "everyone". I've also tried setting individual files to these settings but they can still be seen by the other user account.

A couple of other things I've noticed:

1. although the other non admin user account is named, it shows up as "visitor" when looking at the file structure.

2. There is a home icon by my username - my account is shown under "users".

3. The permissions on the home folder are set to "no access" to everyone but me.

Can anyone advise how I go about securing my own user account? I've always been very confident on Mac security and have been quite surprised / concerned about the apparent lack of security on my own computer.

Many thanks.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jul 29, 2010 11:18 AM

Reply
12 replies

Aug 7, 2010 6:50 AM in response to Toby Lovern

Wheel was the admin user group. That has been replaced with admin. All users are members of staff.
Being part of wheel or admin allows you to su to the root user or use sudo.

Open Terminal and copy/paste this command. It will show the permissions on your home folder:
ls -ale
The top line should look like this and is your home folder:
drwxr-xr-x+ 45 username staff 1530 Aug 5 12:49 .
0: group:everyone deny delete
Each of the default folders in Home should look like this:
drwx------+ 49 username staff 1666 Aug 7 07:08 Desktop
0: group:everyone deny delete
except Public and Sites which should look like this:
drwxr-xr-x+ 6 username staff 204 Feb 20 20:48 Public
0: group:everyone deny delete
What they allow is everyone to see inside the home folder, but not inside the default folders inside of home. That is required to give them access to the Public and Sites folders. If you create a folder inside the root of your home folder, the default permissions for that folder will allow others to see inside of it. If you want to change that, type this command, leave a space, and drag your folders onto the terminal window.
chmod 700

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How to stop other users seeing my files?

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