How to have a secure Pidgin install?

Question

I just installed Pidgin and read about how the passwords are stored in plain text. How do I go about securing stuff up so that my conversations are secure?

I read that giving a 400 permission to the accounts.xml is sufficient, but is it really all that it takes to secure Pidgin?

What else could be done?

Answer 1

Nothing.

Pidgin needs to know the passwords to those accounts if you want it to sign you on each time you start the program.

Current versions of firefox and chrome can encrypt your password list behind a master password, but pidgin does not currently have that facility -- and given that it's open source, and I don't think most of its users are amenable to entering even a single master password every time they start the program, it's not likely to get it in the near future.

Setting accounts.xml to 400 is currently the best you can do short of telling pidgin not to remember any passwords, period.