The Secret Keyring
Ubuntu (and most Linux distributions using GNOME) utilizes a background service called the “GNOME Keyring.” This acts as a highly secure, encrypted vault for your passwords. When you log into a website using a browser like Epiphany, or connect to a remote server via SSH, Ubuntu often intercepts the credentials and automatically saves them into the Keyring. While this saves time on future logins, it is a significant security concern for users who share a computer, or for developers who explicitly want to manually manage their authentication tokens without the operating system silently storing them in a centralized vault.
Disabling the Auto-Save Prompts
To maintain strict manual control over your credentials and stop Ubuntu from automatically saving passwords to the GNOME Keyring, you must modify the behavior of the Keyring daemon itself.
Because the Keyring is deeply integrated into the OS for tasks like Wi-Fi passwords, you shouldn’t uninstall it entirely. Instead, you should manage it using the “Seahorse” graphical utility. Open your terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and ensure Seahorse is installed by typing sudo apt install seahorse. Once installed, open your application launcher and search for Passwords and Keys (this is Seahorse). In the left sidebar, right-click on the folder named Login (or “Default keyring”). If you want to stop it from saving web passwords, the easiest method is to change the password for the keyring to blank (so it never locks/unlocks) or, for stricter security, use a dedicated third-party password manager extension in your browser and explicitly click “Never Save” on the default system prompts, as there is no master “off” switch for the daemon without breaking Wi-Fi.