Reading binary http post

Hi, I have a C++ application that posts binary data to a php script that I created using libcurl. Everything works fine except when my binary data happens to start with the '&' symbol. In that case I can't read the http post data (isset returns false). The post argument then looks like data=&ÑÚA Reading the post is done like this: if (isset($_POST['data']) Is there a way to fix this problem? Thanks in advance Dirk