diff --git a/lib/core/common.py b/lib/core/common.py
index 8d51f8ee8..187b4980f 100644
--- a/lib/core/common.py
+++ b/lib/core/common.py
@@ -1798,7 +1798,7 @@ def getUnicode(value, encoding=None, system=False):
         if isinstance(value, unicode):
             return value
         elif isinstance(value, basestring):
-            return unicode(value, encoding or UNICODE_ENCODING, errors="xmlcharrefreplace")
+            return unicode(value, encoding or UNICODE_ENCODING, errors="replace")
         else:
             return unicode(value) # encoding ignored for non-basestring instances
     else:
diff --git a/lib/core/convert.py b/lib/core/convert.py
index 1422d330b..6746a1fa6 100644
--- a/lib/core/convert.py
+++ b/lib/core/convert.py
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ def urldecode(value, encoding=None):
             result = urllib.unquote_plus(value)
 
     if isinstance(result, str):
-        result = unicode(result, encoding or UNICODE_ENCODING, errors="xmlcharrefreplace")
+        result = unicode(result, encoding or UNICODE_ENCODING, errors="replace")
 
     return result
 
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@ def unicodeencode(value, encoding=None):
         try:
             retVal = value.encode(encoding or UNICODE_ENCODING)
         except UnicodeEncodeError:
-            retVal = value.encode(UNICODE_ENCODING, "xmlcharrefreplace")
+            retVal = value.encode(UNICODE_ENCODING, "replace")
     return retVal
 
 def utf8encode(value):