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.

(Firefox passwords saved in GNOME Keyring)

For this week's poll (well, lately we had a poll every two weeks due to already covering most areas), we'd like to ask the WebUpd8 readers: What is the best Linux password manager? Gorilla, KeePassX, JPassword, GPass, LastPass or Revelation?

After getting encrypted passwords in Linux, Chromium users can finally synchronize passwords across multiple computers.

All you have to do is install Chromium from the Chromium Daily PPA and then launch it with the "--enable-sync-passwords" option (and of course, also use the encrypted passwords option!!).

WebUpd8 reader Nikola writes:

Mitto is a free Internet password storage service that lets you add the passwords to all of your favorite sites in one place then logs you in to each one of them by simply clicking a button.

Some web accounts are meant to be shared, whether with co-workers, clients you're providing access to, or for tech support. Passpack (Windows / Linux / Mac) offers a more secure way than emails or Post-It Notes.

You'll need to "invite" people from within Passpack, basically signing them up for service as well. Once you do, however, sharing a login and password to a site, without sending your data over email and leaving it up to someone else's security methods, involves just a few clicks. You set whether you cousin Joe just has access to the password, or whether they can modify it as well. By centralizing a password with Passpack, you can also "push" password/login changes out to everyone logging in using their shared Passpack access, and can revoke access to certain folks or groups all at once.

Here's a video showing how sharing works in practice:

Passpack is a free service, with upgrades uncapping the number of (full-access) shared users, saved passwords, and other features. Intrigued but wondering about security and privacy? Here are their fairly full disclosures.

[via lifehacker.com]

With all the online services which we are members of (Gmail, Facebook, online banking, Paypal, etc.), utilities that remember passwords often become an almost must-have: using different strong passwords is hard to remember, especially if you use a lot of characters, numbers and such, to make them even stronger.

Comodo i-Vault is a free password manager that stores all your passwords in an internal database which with a 256 bit encryption, thus protecting them from any keyloggers or viruses that can steal personal information on your computer. The most important features of iVault can be summarized as follows:

* Instant and automatic login into websites for which it manages the access credentials
* Saving credentials within a single protected database
* 256 bit data encryption
* Integrated secure password generator
* Support for multiple users on the same computer
* Integrated anti-keylogger system

Firefox extension and Internet Explorer add-on LastPass is a secure password manager for all your web passwords. Like other web-focused password managers, LastPass puts all of your individual passwords behind one master password. When you type in that master password, LastPass can then automatically log you in to any web site you visit with saved login credentials. Even better, LastPass syncs passwords over the internet, so all your saved passwords on your work computer, for example, will always be synced up on your home computer. I haven't been using it for long, but so far LastPass works seamlessly with Firefox and exactly as expected.

If you're creating a login for a site for the first time, LastPass can autogenerate a strong, secure password for you (remember, all you have to remember is your LastPass login).

If you like the look but have already spent a lot of time with another password manager, LastPass supports importing passwords from KeePass, Sxipper, Roboform, and others.

Keep in mind, as always, that in order for syncing to take place, your passwords are stored online—meaning that you're required to place a certain amount of trust in the hands of the folks at LastPass. However, LastPass is only storing encrypted data, and the key to that data lives on your computer (or, when you're not logged in, the key is only in your head). If that's something you can live with, it looks like a strong choice. LastPass is free, works with Firefox and Internet Explorer.