.forward file seems to be ignored

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 17:56, Tim wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 20:25 +0100, Alexander Dalloz wrote:
> > At least now you should get a big fat warning and complaint in your
> > maillog about the permissions of the .forward file. 'chmod
> > 640 .forward' it. "/home" is hopefully `chmod 755' and not more (not
> > world writable).
> 
> It does seem odd, to me, that many files in our home directories default
> to being "-rwxrw-rw-".  Surely making things readable, by default, to
> anyone is a bad idea?  You're relying on parent directory permissions to
> protect you from snooping; and sometimes they're not brilliantly set,
> either.  I'd have thought it best to start off with "-rwx------", and
> let people add permissions when they're necessary.

Unix was developed in a time and place where the purpose of
a multiuser machine was often so the people using it could share
things.  That doesn't seem to be the case anymore, but you
have to draw your own conclusions about whether that is
good or bad.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com