Forum Moderators: coopster
I don't know much about phpMyAdmin, and I'm just guessing here, but is it possible that you haven't added a password for your local MySQL root user, and phpMyAdmin doesn't bother to ask for a password if it isn't necessary? Fresh installations of MySQL usually don't have a password set for the root user, and it's usually one of the first things to do after installation.
You're absolutely right that it's a good idea to set up your local machine as near as possible to your remote one. In addition to setting a password for the local root, I'd set up all local MySQL user(s) and password(s) to be identical to those on your remote server.
I hope this helps.