Home Directory Privacy

[Carlos Mennens <carloswill@gmail.com>]

I don't understand why Debian defaults home directory permissions to
755 where most every other major distribution does 700. I find it
unusual that I have to 'chmod -R 700' a newly created users /home
directory. I know I can modify /etc/adduser.conf or
/etc/default/useradd.conf files to change the default permissions for
newly created home permissions but why does Debian default to this
method?

Thanks for any info in understanding why developers elect this process
as Debian's default action.

-Carlos