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I was using Terminal on MacOS 11.6 last week and noticed my hostname (machine name?) had changed to Vincentudreault. No idea who/what that is, but when I looked at my machine name in Finder it was still what I expected it to be, as was the "Computer Name" listed in the "Sharing" System Preferences. None of the Sharing services are enabled. I was on a secure (I assume...) Wi-fi network, but it was a shared network at a hostel. I switched to different shells and the incorrect name remained. About 30 minutes after I first noticed it, it had changed back (after opening a new window). My username was always still correct. Attached a screenshot in case it's any help.

Should I assume my machine was compromised and change all my passwords and start panicking?

enter image description here

Marty
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  • looks like the mispelling of an actors name: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11146082/bio if that means anything to you... – Frank Thomas Feb 21 '22 at 22:13
  • Any possibility that you've used a different network than usual while that happened? I've read that MacOS sets its hostname from the network configured one – mashuptwice Feb 21 '22 at 22:41
  • Hmm it's possible that I joined a separate network and didn't realize it when it happened...I've never seen that happen though. – Marty Feb 21 '22 at 23:27
  • This is a harmless bit of confusion between your Mac and the local DNS server; see [my answer here](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42496644/#42498088) (although in your case I suspect "Vincentudreault" is the name of some previous device that happened to use the same IP address your Mac got, and the DNS server is remembering that). There's also a previous [Superuser question about it](https://superuser.com/questions/357159/). Some answers suggest using `scutil` to override it, but that's not really necessary -- it's confusing, but harmless. – Gordon Davisson Feb 22 '22 at 06:24

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