Why can other users see my files in MY user folder? This is a screenshot of my private folders/files inside my user folder, but seen from a different user on my MacBook. Several folders are basically openly accessable for everybody, even when created inside my very own /user space.

My questions are:


Why is it like this ?
How can I prevent other users from accessing my files (unless i move them inside protected folders)
This is because Finder creates new folder with default permissions set to 755, or rwxr-xr-x (I agree that's questionable behavior). This means that new folders in your home directory are readable (r) and executable (x) by both users not-only in the same group, but all users on the system.
You can lock down the access to just your user from Finder's Get Info dialog by removing the group access entry and setting the &quot;everyone&quot; entry to &quot;No Access&quot;.
Alternately, you can use Terminal to chmod your directories with chmod 700 ~/your_directory to accomplish the same thing.