Deleting "staff" from permissions

[Jamovik]

What consequences does it have if I delete the "staff" group from permissions on my home folder? I have created a "guest" account (I can't enable the regular guest account since I use file vault) with standard privileges, but it can still click on my home folder and see the list of folders I have inside it, if "staff" is added as a group under folder privileges. What I have done is deleting the "staff" group and adding administrators instead.

Was this a mistake? Or doesn't it matter?

 

[auxbuss]

Most new folders and files created in a user's home directory are created with global read access. To hide them from other users, you need to change the permissions to something appropriate.

For example, the macOS default user folders -- Downloads, Music, etc. -- have file mode 700, which prohibits other users accessing them. For files, you generally want file 600 for the same purpose -- except for executable scripts, which will require 700.

Changing from staff to the admin group might be okay. I'd be nervous doing that in case Apple have a non-root service or task that, say, scans users' home directories. So, keep an eye on you system.log, just in case.

Note that new files and folders you create will need their permissions changed.