A useful reminder that whilst Ubuntu is pretty much immune to viruses
it can still be messed up by unwary clicking !! Looks like the font
cache has been corrupted and usually a shut down and restart will sort
that so have you tried this ?

I had this happen to me once and got Indian characters for a long time. I
had a hard time sorting it out and ended up deleting my settings and
starting fresh. It is in your home folder. I backed up my bookmarks and
deleted everything else in the .mozilla folder. If it happens in other
browsers or other applications then it is more severe than my problem.

Thankyou yes it does seem to have sort itself out. I was away from my desk for
10 hours and now every thing seems fine....hope so lol

Good to hear it sorted itself - you'll know not to ignore those
warnings from WOT in future

"I am a windows level user aspiring to Ubuntu" - what exactly do you mean? I
assumed that you were using Windows, or did you mean you were a new and
inexperienced user of Ubuntu?

And what is WOT?

WOT = Web of Trust ( www.mywot.com ) which is a browser plugin that
notifies whether web sites are safe or not.

but what I really need to know next, from the original poster
is "which operating system did this happen to"?

Umm ubuntu 10.10 but thankyou it seems to have resloved. I am certainly no
programmer so I can't keep it from heppening again except head warnings

If the virus is the one I think it is. Then it is an Windows virus.
Just shut down app and reboot is all you would need.

A filtering system that uses ratings in several catigories. Basically green good
red =problems like spy ware and what not