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I just noticed that there is a user account in my Ubuntu installation and I can not recall creating it myself.

I understand that Squid is a proxy manager but I don't know why should there be a user account for it!

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Squid is not a proxy manager:

"Squid is a proxy server and web cache daemon. It has a wide variety of uses, from speeding up a web server by caching repeated requests; to caching web, DNS and other computer network lookups for a group of people sharing network resources; to aiding security by filtering traffic."

Either you or someone else installed squid at some point in time; when you do this, the squid user gets created so that the program can run under that user, which improves security.

If you know you don't need squid, you can remove it, along with all its configuration files and the user by running this on a terminal:

apt-get purge squid
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On my squid server, (Ubuntu 11.10), squid runs as "proxy" , and not squid, and I do not have a user squid on my system at all. – bodhi.zazen Feb 14 '12 at 20:21
Interesting. the OP didn't say whether Squid is installed, or mentioned which Ubuntu version is used. One other possibility is an intrusion, I guess; a squid user would be easy to overlook. – roadmr Feb 14 '12 at 20:27
I'm sorry I didn't mention, yes Squid is installed on my box. – Hamed Momeni Feb 15 '12 at 8:10

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