BuddyPress.org

@gian-ava, if you’re on a cheap shared-host then there’s a possibility that could slow your website down, a lot. With a sudden rise in users and activity on a shared-host your site is bound to take a lot of strain, because of the limited resources that is dedicated to your site from your hosting company.

There is always a possibility of your site being hacked. I’m not too sure how likely this is otherwise it would be a widespread issue across buddypress.org.

For the unusual characters, I would set the encoding of your WordPress to Unicode(UTF8),
1. Make sure you are logged in as admin
2. In the admin dashboard, go to Settings > Reading
3. In the text box next to “Encoding for pages and feeds” insert “UTF-8” without the exclamation marks.