Dat file security

[Anon]

I have a script that writes various things to a .dat file. Obviously, this file needs to be set to 777. Now for some reason this file keeps being made blank, ie, everything in it is erased. It must be a hacker...

How can I secure this file????

Any ideas anyone?

The script MUST be able to write to it, but I dont want anyone to be able to delete it.

Please email me at [e-mail] or [e-mail]

Thanx...

[Anon]

Another problem with this is that the .dat is called by the cgi script to display its contents. on the downloads page for example I use SSI to include the URL:

http://www.mydomain.com/fileupload.cgi?category=web

This displays everything in the web category that is in the dat file. Does this rule out .htaccess security?