umask is a permission mask that turns off permission bits. It’s normally defined in either /etc/profile or /etc/login.defs as a system configuration on shared systems (e.g. SSH / TELNET hosts), to reduce the default permissions applied by processes to files created by users.
To view the current umask setting, open a terminal and run the command
umask
To change the current umask to something else, e.g. 077, enter it as folows:
umask 077
in this example, 077 means:
- 0: Do nothing on the owner permission
- 7: Turn the group permissions off
- 7: Turn the world permissions off
