diff --git a/hbd b/hbd
index 66e8f81..5de448f 100755
--- a/hbd
+++ b/hbd
@@ -562,7 +562,7 @@ class HttpHandler(BaseHTTPServer.BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
 		global sig
 		code = 200
 		xsig = 0
-		rqAcceptEncoding =  self.headers.getheader('Accept-encoding',None)
+		rqAcceptEncoding =  self.headers.getheader('Accept-encoding',{})
 		headerdict =  {"Content-Type": "text/html; charset = ISO-8859-1" }
 		if DEBUG > 2: sys.stderr.write("handle\n")
 		qr = urlparse.urlparse(self.path)