Here is what you need to do to reset the right way all files and directories in Linux. Works also on Macos and FreeBSD.

Sad eggs

Open the terminal. Change directory to the directory containing all you want to fix permissions.

We will fix also the owner, optionally.

I am setting OTHERS to 0, but if some services need read access to your directories or files, use 755, respectively 644. I am just a bit more restrictive and set correct the groups depending on how they will be used.

Fix directories:

find . -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;

Fix the files: find . -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

Fix owner:

chmod -R [replace with user]:[replace with group] .

If this are my local files, usually I replace user and group with my username.

If this are in a web project, on a web server, I set user for the user running the application and group for a group the web server belongs to. I normally ensure both belong to that group. Make note you must set your application platform to do an umask of 027. PHP it is in the ini settings ;-)