Sure, but since there's no enforced standard for how privileges are configured on a system, there's always the possibility that your app to be the only escape ticket.
You can dismiss that possibility of course. But, as a general habit, it's best to use secure alternatives instead of mulling over probabilities every other line.
As a positive side-effect, the change would make your app not crash on systems with long HOME env paths.:)
I see you already addressed it but here let me give a scenario.
Say the program was installed and set so the user didn't have privs to modify the executable (so an attacker couldn't just change it to do what they want).
A buffer overflow could allow an attacker to gain control flow of the program and feed bogus data to the user allowing them to scrub their presence from the map.
You can dismiss that possibility of course. But, as a general habit, it's best to use secure alternatives instead of mulling over probabilities every other line.
As a positive side-effect, the change would make your app not crash on systems with long HOME env paths.:)