Author: Andrew
| Date: August 28, 2011
|
| Tags:
gnome,
linux,
passwords,
pidgin,
security,
ubuntu
By default, Pidgin saves all your passwords in plain text (look under
~/.purple/accounts.xml). About four years ago there was a
bug report that asked to encrypt the passwords, but the developers marked the bug as "wontfix". Update: you can read about the reasons behind this,
here.
Here's where Pidgin Gnome Keyring plugin comes in: this plugin will make Pidgin store your passwords in the system keyring. One note though: the plugin will not prevent other plugins from writing passwords in the accounts.xml file (I don't use any such plugins so I can't give you an example).
Update: Despite the plugin being called "Pidgin GNOME Keyring", it was ported from gnome-keyring to libsecret in February 2015.