Re: ... it could “overwrite your entire filesystem”
> you could get up to lots of mischief by overwriting the user's own files
Indeed. Just think for a moment where the valuable and irreplaceable data in your system is; the photographs, the document archive, the password vault... All in /home/yourname, probably owned by your user and group. If /boot is overwritten, that's recoverable. Even /, if you have /home on a separate filesystem [1]. But if someone symlinks all over /home, then it's going to be time to restore from backup.
[1] Such a setup was one of the things recommended in the first Linux I ever installed, I've done it ever since, and thoroughly recommend it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
