I think the strange symbols are characters which can't be displayed ... or stored in the database. Of course the original characters CAN be, but there's a setting (and I forget what it's called) on databases to tell them what character set to support. There may be something similar in the forums software. My 'signature' is an example ... it's supposed to look like fish swimming up and down, but lately, I've noticed that some SMF forums (the software that we use) have stopped displaying them and now display gibberish. So ... long story short, I'm aware of the issue but haven't had time to look into it yet...
