What happened to my downloads folder permissions?

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1

Hello all,

I’ve woken up today to see that my downloads folder’s owner and group has seemingly changed overnight?

Unlike every other file in my home directory, its owner was set to User 501 and its group to Wheel. I am the only person who uses this system, no user with the ID 501 exists in etc/passwd. The only program using the folder was nautilus. I have had no external directories mounted for months. I had been using rsync to copy files to my downloads from an external computer, but that was several days ago and the other folders I copied to have the correct permissions. The only things downloaded in the days beforehand were from government websites or official uni downloads so nothing sketchy.

I haven’t touched the permissions of the folder, nor do I remember doing anything that should have changed any files permissions in days.

Screenshot From 2025-11-25 15-52-19

I gave myself ownership again, that wasn’t a worry, I am more wondering what happened.

Has this happened to anyone else before and di you figure out why?

2

This is a guess…

What is the user ID and group ID of the files on the remote computer?
Is it user ID 501 by any chance? If so check if your rsync options set the user ID on the destination files and folders.

3

I second the opinion that it might have to do with rsync, given that it was the Downloads folder used for the destination.

I would check the rsync command if there wasn’t any syntax mispelling, such as
some missing trailing slash, e.g. rsync -avz source:/home/remoteuser/Downloads ~/.

4

That could be, but only if rsync is run with sudo or as the root user.

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