[yvsanil]

Controlling access to your files and directories
Every file and directory in your account can be protected from or made accessible to other users by changing its access permissions.

You can only change the permissions for files and directories that you own.

Displaying access permissions
To display the access permissions of a file or directory use the the command:

ls -l filename (directory)

This displays a one line summary for each file or directory. For example:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 erpl08 staff 3649 Feb 22 15:51 my.html

This first item -rwxr-xr-x represents the access permissions on this file. The following items represent the number of links to it; the username of the person owning it; the name of the group which owns it; its size; the time and date it was last changed, and finally, its name.

[ScottHughes]

Thanks for this. It's important to keep files that aren't public under password protection. So, I recommend everyone put any files that don't need to be accessed by others under password protection.