I have a MacBook Air with Bitdefender installed, including its VPN component, although I do not actively connect to the VPN. When I start the computer, Bitdefender sometimes displays what it says is my current public IP address. On one occasion after shutting down and restarting later, the address looked different from usual. I had logged into several accounts during that session, so I'm concerned whether the change could indicate a security problem.
The next time I started the Mac, the usual-looking address appeared again. Could this have been caused by the computer briefly displaying a local address, the network becoming available before the VPN-related software finished loading, or my internet provider temporarily assigning a different address during maintenance? I want to clarify that the VPN was not actively connected, and I'm mainly asking whether this kind of change is normal or something I should investigate.
3 Answers
Bitdefender’s window may not always be showing the same kind of address at every moment. The computer’s network connection can come up in stages, and software may briefly report one available address before the full connection is ready. Since the VPN was not connected, the change does not automatically mean your traffic was routed through a VPN or that your credentials were exposed.
Internet providers can assign or change your public address, and connections may use IPv4, IPv6, or both through a dual-stack setup. A temporary change can happen when the modem renews its lease, the provider performs maintenance, or networking finishes initializing during startup. Seeing the usual address again later is not, by itself, evidence of malware or account compromise.
The punctuation matters here. An IPv4 address uses periods, such as 203.0.113.25, while an IPv6 address uses hexadecimal groups separated by colons, such as 2001:db8::25. If one display had periods and the other had colons, you were probably seeing two different address formats rather than a sign that someone accessed your accounts.
I checked again and mine normally shows colons rather than semicolons, so it may have been an IPv6 address that looked unfamiliar.
A short-lived change in the numbers during an IPv4 connection could also simply be a temporary address assignment from the provider. It would be worth checking the exact characters before drawing conclusions.