How to prevent other users from viewing or copying files in your home directory

By default, all volumes follow standard Unix file permissions. Typically, the permissions for user directories and files are set to 755 (i.e., rwxr-xr-x). This setting allows other users to view and copy your files, but not to modify or delete them.

If you prefer to restrict access so that only you can read, write, or execute files in a directory, you can change the permissions using the following command:

chmod 700 <directory>

To apply this restriction to your home directory and your temporary (scratch) directory, run:

chmod 700 /home/$USER
chmod 700 $SCRATCHDIR