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Being quite a new user (Mint 18.1), I'm a bit abashed by the behaviour between seahorse and the applications that request a password from the wallet. In my case, the ownCloud client asks to store my oC credentials to seahorse so technically I can't auto-start oC without the category in which it is stored ("default") to be unlocked. But once it's unlocked, anyone can have access to the password by ticking "show the password".

Shouldn't "Show the password" require a sudo password? This sounds quite basic to me.

Thanks

The whole point of a password wallet is that applications can retrieve passwords from the wallet and send them to the service that requires the password. The wallet is stored encrypted, your login password is used to decrypt it when you log in.

Seahorse isn't the wallet application, it's an application that allows you to browse and edit your wallet. It has the same access permissions as any other program you run.

It is not true that “anyone can have access to the password”. Only a program running on your account can access the password. Any program you run on your account is effectively you — it's acting on your behalf.

“Show the password” is exactly the same operation as “retrieve the password to use it to log in somewhere”. This doesn't require root access. Root access is about doing things that affect all users of the machine, such as configuring hardware or installed software. Your passwords are yours only, and typing your password when you log in or when you unlock your screen shows to the computer that you are you.

There are protocols that allow “locking up” a password inside a secure environment, such that the password can never be extracted from it (except with higher privileges, possibly only through physical attacks), the secure environment only allows using that password as part of a login attempt and what comes out of the secure environment is a one-time token derived from the password that a remote service can verify. Such protocols are not very common, and where they're implemented (e.g. OAuth), the secure environment is usually a third-party cloud service.

Your question sounds like you're used to the security model of mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android. Those systems have a peculiar security model where they isolate applications from each other. Desktop OSes such as Linux and Windows don't do that, they only isolate users from each other. Furthermore those systems have a very peculiar security model where the user does not have full control of the software running on the device, even though they legally own the hardware, unless the device has been “jailbroken” (“rooted”). With a desktop system, your computer is yours, you aren't restricted from accessing the data on it. Your passwords are your data, so you can access them, and which application you use to do this is entirely your business.