Comment 12 for bug 481825

Having a GUI for that would be good, but it's hard to tell where we should show this kind of setting, other than in an optional advanced users control applet. For most desktop users, the current default is fine. Anyway, a bug report is not the place to discuss that.

Changing the default policy should be discussed on a development mailing list such as ubuntu-devel-discuss, though I don't think developers will accept to change it. If you want a GUI to be created, this would require a specification with considerations about the interface, where to put it etc., and somebody willing to work on it. Not so easy!

For now, I can advise you to:
- edit your personal umask in ~/.bash_profile, which is not so hard to do, and possibly to the same in /etc/profile for new users too
- or simply make the root of your home folder readable only by you. This will prevent people from discovering what's in it, even if they could theoretically read the files if they knew their path. This is easy to do graphically and should be enough in the case of your roommate.

Thanks for your attention to this problem, anyway!