Why are there Chinese looking characters in the Firefox address bar after I sign out of my gmail account?
I stopped using Firefox when I became aware of a worm that had been spread. Recently, I used Firefox again instead of GoogleChrome or Internet Explorer, but now I am concerned that my computer may have been compromised because of the Chinese looking characters in the Firefox address bar, after I signed out of my gmail account.
This happened
Just once or twice
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Chosen solution
If you see CJK (Chinese/Japanese) characters on the Firefox title bar or the Windows Taskbar then that can happen if Firefox switches to UTF-16 encoding for some reason.
The RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension (Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) has been reported to cause that issue.
Be sure not to get confused with the RealPlayer plugin (Tools > Add-ons > Plugins) that plays media files. The extension adds some extra features like saving media files.
You can disable/remove the RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension in the RealPlayer Preferences (RealPlayer: Tools > Preferences > Download & Recording)
See also Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems
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Chosen Solution
If you see CJK (Chinese/Japanese) characters on the Firefox title bar or the Windows Taskbar then that can happen if Firefox switches to UTF-16 encoding for some reason.
The RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension (Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) has been reported to cause that issue.
Be sure not to get confused with the RealPlayer plugin (Tools > Add-ons > Plugins) that plays media files. The extension adds some extra features like saving media files.
You can disable/remove the RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension in the RealPlayer Preferences (RealPlayer: Tools > Preferences > Download & Recording)
See also Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems
We had this problem when the Windows Language Bar appeared and chose Chinese as the default language. We simply removed Chinese from the Language Bar and everything went back to normal in firefox.
I hope this helps.