Manual Install created admin account

I admit that I haven’t manually setup a new WordPress site in a while, nor have I really kept up on changes or announcements. But I had a highly unusual experience this morning and I want to know what happened.

I uploaded the latest version of WordPress to a clean cPanel account. After unpacking the files, I moved the software out of the “wordpress” folder to reside just under pubic_html.

I then copied the wp-config-sample.php to a new file named wp-config.php. I entered the database credentials, added salts from the link, changed the database prefix, and saved the file.

Then I ran the following command from the browser address bar:

https://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin/install.php

I was notified that it appeared that WordPress had already been installed, but when I tried logging in, I couldn’t. I deleted the .htaccess file from the site root and tried again. No joy.

When I viewed the site, the site name was some weird string of letters.

I accessed the database using cPanel’s phpMyAdmin tool. There was a user in that database with these credentials:
ID: “admin”
Email: “[email protected].”

I changed the username, user password, and user email through phpMyAdmin. I changed the admin email in the options table. After eradicating the unwanted account and all traces of the strange email address, I was then able to login to the site and begin to set it up.

My question is whether the database is automatically populated and a default admin account is setup without the installer’s (i.e., me) knowledge now. If so, that doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Any insights would be welcomed.