Can I stop people from viewing a directory contents?

If there is no default home page in a specific directory, users who type:

http://www.yourdomain.com/directory/

will get a list of the files and folders in that directory.

The easy way to stop this list from showing up is to place a blank index.html file in the directory.

In addition, cpanel has an option that allows you to turn off directory viewing by folder. You can now use this in lieu of an index page.