Had a problem recently where I needed to share sftp uploads to linux amongst different users. Step 1: Make sure the users primary group is the shared group newgrp groupname http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/sect_03_04.html Step 2: You need to know about umask. You can edit it via .bashrc, but that wont help you out for sftp Step 3: Modify sshd_config, so that it sets umask correctly for the sftp session http://jeff.robbins.ws/articles/setting-the-umask-for-sftp-transactions