Is this request really from Apple, with it's first word misspelled?

The request is valid, but your concern is equally so.

accountsd is a macOS process that refers to a daemon used to access information required for your Apple / iCloud accounts. The more important question is when does that dialog appear. For example, the dialog may appear immediately upon using some Apple product or service that requires authentication, and you did not previously grant that authorization. In that case you can be comfortable providing it.

Requests for your login credentials should never come as a surprise.

Back to your concern: A core tenet of Apple's design philosophy is to minimize or eliminate needless and distracting user interaction. In my opinion this counts as one of those annoyances for no other reason that the accountsd process amounts to technical minutia users ought not to even know exists. They're asking for trouble when completely valid and legitimate process names are similar to those used by illegitimate or malicious apps or processes. For example rapportd is an equally valid macOS process (daemon) but is frequently confused with a popular "banking security" product that will effectively prevent your Mac from working and render it practically useless. It is a very short step from there for a bad actor to leverage obscure macOS process names in an effort to obscure its intent.

I encourage you to express your highly valid concerns to Apple using their feedback portal: Feedback - macOS - Apple

That is, in fact, a valid macOS alert message.

You can safely enter your login password, and I suggest go ahead and click "Always Allow".

"Accountsd" refers to an OS internal file or process that needs access permission to properly do its job. It's not a misspelling.

RocknRowBoat wrote:

As usual, you good folks are absolutely correct. I had a moment of vast intellect that said to just Google it.

I did and confirmed sure enough, Apple puts screwy additional letters on several common words to describe Apple stuff.

I wonder what kind of bonus the person received who pitched the idea of just tacking a “d” to the end of a word to make it their own?

That might have been an interesting meeting.

You may want to read this article that explains "daemon". It has been in common usage for decades and is identified by adding a "d" to a process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)

So your insinuations above are completely mistaken.

It is not an english word, it is the name of a kernel process. It is a unixism. Kernel background processes are called "daemons" and are denoted by appending a 'd' on the end of the name, like "accounts" + "d" becomes "accountsd".

The first word (accounted) is not actually misspelled, it is the name of part of your system software. See details and related items at this link.

... every time I go to an area where Apple requires a password different from my log onto computer password, which will forever be my biggest complaint about Apple, why do I have to have 3 or 4 more different passwords after I've already entered the locked Apple vault that is my Mac.

There is nothing that prevents using the same password as your login password.

Change the login password on Mac - Apple Support

I wonder what kind of bonus the person received who pitched the idea of just tacking a “d” to the end of a word to make it their own?

The answer will disappoint you, since the "daemon" concept predates macOS by a long time. It actually makes sense from a programming perspective, since tacking the d suffix on to some descriptive word makes it instantly recognizable.

macOS implements countless such daemons that operate as background processes. They range from things like cloudd (obviously used for iCloud) to cupsd (Common Unix Printing System) to lsd (launch services) and even deleted (which deletes temporary files).

Since Unix-like operating systems are largely the product of collaborative open source development, it's doubtful anyone got a bonus or even passing recognition for developing this more or less accepted naming convention.

Thanks for the recognition. I must say, John Galt's answer was much more thorough, as usual.