Which directories are private to specific users by default on UNIX-based systems?

Question

Which directories and files in UNIX-based file systems have default user permissions set? For example, a user's home directory can't be seen by other users on a system without his permission. What other directories have their permissions set in this way when a user account is created? /etc? /bin? Others?

Answer 1

Try man hier to find out the directory structure for your distribution.

Answer 2

This depends on the distro but generally regular users only have write access to files under their home directory along with a couple folders for temporary files. What they have read access varies even more. If you wanted to change the default permissions of new users' home directories, you'd probably modify /etc/skel on most systems.

Answer 3

Many system files have read and or execute permissions for other users(users which are not the user owning the file-usually root for system files, and are not in the same group as the user who owns the file (such as the root group).