CHMOD 777 - Some concerns

I'm just looking for some oppinions in this thread. I bought/downloaded the three vBAdvanced forum accessories. I've installed the link management program so far, and it states that a particular folder must be CHMOD to 777. 755 is the default setting. Some members of my forum expressed concern at giving the world exe priveleges to a folder in our forums. How risky do you all think this is? I had to do some research to even find out what CHMOD actually was, and it seems the third 7 is giving priveleges to strangers outside the group, so to speak. A compromise I was thinking of was perhaps 776 or 775, if enough people thought the third 7 compromised security. That way, only forum members and myself would have exe priveleges. Further, I could place all current members in the exe allowable group as per the second 7, and have all new members under a trial status, or something, until they're verified to be legit. I haven't had any bots manage to defeat my capcha defense, or hackers even care to bother with my forums, but I do try to be safe. What're all your oppinions on the issue?

[SEOvB]

I think you're totally confused about what CHMOD effects, or your explanation totally confused me which is possible.

CHMOD doesn't have any effect on your forum users.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

You are for sure confused about some things.

First of all 777 on a directory gives search/directory listing priviledges, not execute (that is for files).

Secondly the users that are affected by the permissions are Operating System users (ie root etc..) not forum users. The user in use depends on which user account is used to run the program (ie. your webserver, apache etc..) and access the files/directories.

[matt_turpin]

Thanks. Like I said, I didn't even know what CHMOD was. I installed the program, then went in the MMO that my forum caters to, and I was talking about it. A couple of friends there began telling me their version of CHMOD. As the guy who had to use wikipedia to figure out what CHMOD refers to, not that it helped much, (just sort of threw me on the right track and I got it by trial and error), I had no reason not to believe it. So yeah, I've been confused. Before vBulletin, I was just your average idiot with an angelfire homepage and modest but outdated html knowledge. All the server and CSS terminology are new to me, but it is fun.