Hello,
I am a newbie reading through the forums, and I am trying to figure out how to let users access the PUBLIC folder, but have READ ONLY access.
Hi, welcome to the community,
Unfortuantely you cannot change the permission on the Public share. Anything in there will have full read and write access.
Erm, @lluna, I know on the DL4100 and I guess the DL2100, you can make the Public folder read-only or deny access.
I have no clue whatsoever why WD force the Public share open to all by force on other NASs. I allow a few friends access to certain shares on the DL4100 and being able to shut-off the hard coded public share is a 100% advantage for me.
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It’s a mystery only known to the product engineers born during the reign of Queen Victoria? 
A guess… It’s deliberate as as many businesses would not want to buy a WD NAS where the Publc share is nailed to be R/W for everyone. The DL and EX series NASs cost more and are aimed at business use so here the Public share can be configured.
I guess it’s a very deliberate marketing strategy.
My understanding after talking with WD Tech Support is that the Public area it is set that way because it is the default location for uploading pictures for those with accounts on the NAS device using WD Photos. If you notice, WD Photos will not upload to ANY other area - it is preprogrammed this way. I have tested that with the DL by making the Public area private and not sharing out to a particular user and then have them try to upload a picture; the WD Photos just stalls out.
I told them I did not like it that way for my purposes - if I had a friend that I wanted to share 1 or 2 things with, they would need an account (or so I thought) and then they would have FULL access to all of our uploads! He mentioned another way to share limited files but I did not understand it (this was 18 months ago now). I have not pursued that aspect of limited sharing yet, but I hope to as that would be a nice function - share something with a friend on a very limited basis, both from what they could see and how long they had access to it. This would still keep my files private while allowing the NAS to share some things.
Hmmm… Maybe I missed this because I tried the WD Photos app and didn’t like it, so I use the My Cloud app and now never the WD Photos app. Still, it’s a put of a not-right way to implement this this.
Until the recent higher end NASs the Public share/folder has always been a pain. I guess where it may not be a pain is if someone just wants a NAS for their home and don’t care about creating network shares for family members.
Personally, what WD has done on the DL and EX series NAS’s with how Public is handled should be rolled out to all the NASs. As in give the owner of a WD NAS a choice. This has been my argument all along and I think an argument of many others.
Isnt WD Photos abandoned app anyway?? (It was last updated on 15.12.2014! / appstore)
