Set privilege of folder under Apache of Linux

you don't have to set

rwx

for
'other'. You should change the owner and/or group of the particular folder/file you are trying to protect. E.g.:

chown -R cwd:www-data /var/www/cwd.com
chmod 750 /var/www/cwd.com

Now only members of the group

www-data

can
read

/var/www/cwd.com

.
And only you (cwd) can write to it. If you want to allow your applications (through Apache) to write/modify files in that directory too you chmod it to 770.

I think this covers all your issues, I see no reason to change the user apache is running under.