Apache query error affecting PHP?

Hello... I'm wondering if I have found an oddity in httpd. I'm currently writing a PHP directory listing system. I am pretty sure that this is not a php issue, but I have not been able to test it on a httpd install sans php, but it can be seen when requesting an image file, which should not invoke the PHP parser. So here it is, if you try hitting the URL: http://www.anapraxis.com/assets/global/en_solutions.gif?element=../../../ Or if you would like to see it on the httpd site: http://httpd.apache.org/images/httpd_logo_wide.gif?element=../../ Apache will actually return the directory listing of the assets/ directory (assuming you have directory listing enabled, otherwise it returns the standard forbidden error). It does not seem to matter what the actual variable name following the "?" is. However, shouldn't apache ignore anything following the "?" as it should really just be a part of the query string variables? This really seems to be buggering my attempt at passing directories in variables, but it seems that a lot of scripts must do this, am I just doing something stupid? Thanks, Wes