Mac and external HD permissions I'm wondering if my HD gets stolen, and my current permissions are set to:
User: R&amp;W
Staff: R&amp;W
Everyone: R only.

Would anyone be able to plug it to a mac (it's a HFS+ partition) and just read any file?
External drives [in fact any drive other than the current boot volume] have zero protection by permission.

It is trivial to Get Info on the volume &amp; set "Ignore ownership on this volume"



The only way to protect data from any potential bad actor in possession of your drive is to encrypt it.