When allowing or disallowing access to an object it is very difficult to nominate specific access rights for each and every IBM i user profile. To avoid having to do this a 'special' user profile of *PUBLIC can be used.

The *PUBLIC user profile means 'any other IBM i user' not specifically mentioned in the list of authorized users. Thus if a file had the following security information associated with it:

 It can be seen that:

• Users QPGMR and QSECOFR have full rights to the file.
• User QSYSOPR can read, change, update, and delete records in the file but cannot modify or delete the file definition.
• User QUSER has no rights at all to the file
• Any other user (*PUBLIC) can read information from the file.