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I am getting an ongoing issue with Firefox 36.0 under Ubuntu 15.04.

Whenever I open Firefox it automatically sets the default language to Arabic, even though having never configured it to use Arabic:

enter image description here

When I run locale in terminal I get:

LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
LC_CTYPE="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_CA.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

I tried already removing completely Firefox following these steps and then re-installed again, it installed successfully using default language EN, but after some days when I open Firefox it is automatically set to default language Arabic again.

Just for safety I removed Firefox and am using only Chrome at the moment, I don't know if this is a virus or a bug related to any specific versions if there's anyone who might know I appreciate.

guilhebl
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    Can you run the locale command in a terminal window, and let us know what it outputs by editing your question. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 03 '15 at 05:10
  • Do you use Arabic at all elsewhere on the desktop? If you suspect a security breach on your machine, you might be best off wiping your hard drive and reinstalling your whole system, just to be sure. – Knowledge Cube Mar 03 '15 at 05:10
  • 15.04 is not out yet, this question is off-topic here. Report a bug instead --> http://askubuntu.com/questions/5121/how-do-i-report-a-bug – Parto Mar 03 '15 at 05:18
  • no I don't use it at all, and never configured it, it just happens automatically when I open Firefox. I just seen this in Firefox alone not in any other apps. – guilhebl Mar 03 '15 at 05:19
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    Related: http://askubuntu.com/questions/520928/ubuntu-firefox-homepage-temporarily-showing-arabic – Knowledge Cube Mar 03 '15 at 05:19
  • It's not the Firefox language; it's the web page content language. – AliNajafies Mar 03 '15 at 06:39
  • @AliNa: Which is controlled by the browser language, isn't it? – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 03 '15 at 07:13
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    No, webpage language preference is separate from UI locale or encoding in Firefox. – Erkin Alp Güney Mar 03 '15 at 08:10
  • I researched a bit and it seems to be related to adware, I was able to fix it resetting Firefox, and lately after updating both FF and Ubuntu 15.04 I stopped getting it, so I'll close this question for now – guilhebl Apr 17 '15 at 20:29

2 Answers2

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Go to Edit -> Preferences -> Contents tab and click the Choose... button to see the preferred languages. You can remove Arabic or Move Down to make it less preferred.

Content Languages

As you can see on the upper part of the window, this setting is for displaying web pages offered in more than one language. So it have nothing to do with browser language nor with any locales.

AliNajafies
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Gunnar Hjalmarsson
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  • I understand that but what happened in my case is that I never configured or added Arabic, neither use it in any ways, I always use english as default language for Firefox but suddenly Firefox changed the default start page to Arabic with no human intervention, as from my posted image, so I suspect something related to malware in this case. – guilhebl Mar 04 '15 at 19:45
  • @guilhebl: Is Arabic included in your language preference list in Firefox? In that case, and while I have no idea why it happened, you can simply remove it. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Mar 04 '15 at 20:48
  • I too am having this problem. My Ubuntu start page has changed itself first to Spanish, and then later to Turkish. The menu described here lists only en-us and en in my preferences. – John Apr 09 '15 at 16:33
  • I also once got the message changed to Turkish, I researched a bit and it seems to be related to adware, I was able to fix it resetting Firefox, and lately after updating both FF and Ubuntu 15.04 I stopped getting it, so I'll close this question for now. – guilhebl Apr 17 '15 at 20:27
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I stopped getting it after updating both FF and Ubuntu, and after refreshing firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings

guilhebl
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