Comment 16 for bug 118283

ceg, your suggestions sounds perfect. I've verified your fix. Here is the procedure, for anyone else who wants to do this.

Within gconf-editor, I used the "Find" tool to search for "vfat" (searching also in all key names and key values).

This returned the key "/system/storage/default_options/vfat"

I deleted the umask key, then added the 2 keys you suggested as follows:
dmask=022
fmask=133

Now all directories/folders on my vfat USB flash drives and USB external hard drives are presented with the permissions:

drwxr-xr-x

...and all files on my vfat USB flash drives and USB external hard drives are presented with the permissions:

-rw-r--r--

Perfect! This matches the default umask that Ubuntu sets up by default for all users in /etc/profile

ceg, you da man!!