Bizarre symbols in Preferences

OK, just had a look at my Preferences folder in Library, and most of it seems to be taken up with what look like empty folders with titles like:

›øˇfi`øˇ|êËøfl^`êÊ§¿†~q|êËøˇfi`øˇ

Anybody got any idea what that's all about? There's probably well over a hundred of them. They seem to have appeared sometime over the past three months, because last time I trashed my preferences in an app, none of these folders were there.

Any ideas?

could have been generated by another app you installed, what have you installed since the last time you trashed your prefs?