Of thumbnails and folder permissions

One problem if you change the ownership of the directory is that maybe (depending on the permissions) you won’t be able to modify anything in it. You can do two things to give nobody access to this folder: either you chown the folder to nobody, as suggested, but you can also change the file mode (access control) of the directory with chmod so that anyone (including nobody) can write in it. If you have even more control over your server you could create a group that includes you and nobody, and give this group access to write in the directory.

The chmod method is used most often, as it works with most hosts. Check your wp-config/uploads/ directory, probably everyone has read and write permissions there too.