Using umask

The umask modifies the permissions of files that are created with 'open' and 'mkdir'.

 $ umask
 002
 $ touch newfile 
 $ ls -l newfile
 -rw-rw-r--  1   reegen   webfolk       0  Sep 17 10:00 newfile
 
 $ umask 077; touch newfile2; ls -l newfile2
 -rw-------  1   reegen   webfolk       0  Sep 17 10:00 newfile2