Weird characters appeared on border of my home page

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  fabiusmaximus2000 · Member · Jan 10, 2012 at 3:18 pm

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  Suddenly a strip of characters (numbers and letters) appeared on the left edge of my home screen. I had not made any changes recently. They appear only on the home screen, not on any posts.

  It’s a single row of characters. Numbers, letters (upper and lower case) and symbols.

  Does anyone know what might have caused this? How to fix this?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  airodyssey · Member · Jan 11, 2012 at 12:10 am

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  Hi. The culprit is this post:
  http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/32822/

  For some reason, you have a Facebook HTML code there at the very beginning. Remove everything above the following line:
  <p><em>Summary: What do we know about...

  And before you ask me what caused this: unfortunately, I have no idea because I’m not in front of your computer. It could be anything from your fingers slipping on your keyboard to a rogue add-on on your browser. I can only tell you to be more careful next time :-)

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  timethief · Member · Jan 11, 2012 at 12:14 am

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  @airodyssey
  Do you recommend that he edits the post and deletes the Facebook HTML code?

  I recommend that he does this > Go to Settings > Writing and select “ ___ WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” and then scroll down and click “Save Changes.”

  Open it in the editor, make one minor change such as adding a space and then deleting it, and then click “Update Post.” Check your blog and see if it is back to normal.

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  airodyssey · Member · Jan 11, 2012 at 12:15 am

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  @timethief:
  Yes, that’s what I recommend.

  This is not a usual case of actual blog text that appears in the wrong place, but rather an entire HTML code that’s not supposed to be there in the first place. (complete with <div> tags in the right places), which is why I didn’t suggest the “WordPress should correct…” setting.

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  timethief · Member · Jan 11, 2012 at 12:17 am

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  @airodyssey
  Thanks for clarifying – understood. :)

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  fabiusmaximus2000 · Member · Jan 11, 2012 at 2:28 am

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  Thanks! That fixed it!

  Now for the bigt question: where did this code come from? This has happened before (but I’ve caught it before saving).

  A virus?

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  airodyssey · Member · Jan 11, 2012 at 2:33 am

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  As I said before: “I have no idea”. But it doesn’t hurt to scan your computer once in a while and to not download everything you find on the Internet.

  You may also want to check with Facebook in case your account was compromised. Just as a precaution.