diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 9b0528fb..18b907dc 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -238,6 +238,11 @@
 			<artifactId>rome-opml</artifactId>
 			<version>1.0</version>
 		</dependency>
+		<dependency>
+			<groupId>com.googlecode.juniversalchardet</groupId>
+			<artifactId>juniversalchardet</artifactId>
+			<version>1.0.3</version>
+		</dependency>
 
 		<dependency>
 			<groupId>com.google.oauth-client</groupId>
diff --git a/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedParser.java b/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedParser.java
index e976b2a7..14f4a2c0 100644
--- a/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedParser.java
+++ b/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedParser.java
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 package com.commafeed.backend.feeds;
 
 import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
+import java.io.StringReader;
 import java.util.Calendar;
 import java.util.Date;
 import java.util.List;
@@ -41,14 +42,12 @@ public class FeedParser {
 		feed.setLastUpdated(Calendar.getInstance().getTime());
 
 		try {
-			InputSource source = new InputSource(new ByteArrayInputStream(xml));
-			if (new String(ArrayUtils.subarray(xml, 0, 100))
-					.split(SystemUtils.LINE_SEPARATOR)[0].toUpperCase()
-					.contains("ISO-8859-1")) {
-				// they probably use word, we need to handle curly quotes and
-				// other word special characters
-				source.setEncoding("windows-1252");
-			}
+			String encoding = FeedUtils.guessEncoding(xml);
+			String xmlString = FeedUtils.trimInvalidXmlCharacters(new String(
+					xml, encoding));
+
+			InputSource source = new InputSource(new StringReader(xmlString));
+
 			SyndFeed rss = new SyndFeedInput().build(source);
 			feed.setUrl(feedUrl);
 			feed.setTitle(rss.getTitle());
diff --git a/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedUtils.java b/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedUtils.java
index 40faa799..da81339a 100644
--- a/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedUtils.java
+++ b/src/main/java/com/commafeed/backend/feeds/FeedUtils.java
@@ -5,9 +5,25 @@ import org.jsoup.Jsoup;
 import org.jsoup.nodes.Document.OutputSettings;
 import org.jsoup.nodes.Entities.EscapeMode;
 import org.jsoup.safety.Whitelist;
+import org.mozilla.universalchardet.UniversalDetector;
 
 public class FeedUtils {
 
+	public static String guessEncoding(byte[] bytes) {
+		String DEFAULT_ENCODING = "UTF-8";
+		UniversalDetector detector = new UniversalDetector(null);
+		detector.handleData(bytes, 0, bytes.length);
+		detector.dataEnd();
+		String encoding = detector.getDetectedCharset();
+		detector.reset();
+		if (encoding == null) {
+			encoding = DEFAULT_ENCODING;
+		} else if (encoding.equalsIgnoreCase("ISO-8859-1")) {
+			encoding = "windows-1252";
+		}
+		return encoding;
+	}
+
 	public static String handleContent(String content) {
 		if (StringUtils.isNotBlank(content)) {
 			content = trimUnicodeSurrogateCharacters(content);
@@ -24,6 +40,20 @@ public class FeedUtils {
 		return content;
 	}
 
+	public static String trimInvalidXmlCharacters(String xml) {
+		if (StringUtils.isBlank(xml)) {
+			return null;
+		}
+		StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
+		for (int i = 0; i < xml.length(); i++) {
+			char c = xml.charAt(i);
+			if (c >= 20 || c == 0x9 || c == 0xA || c == 0xD) {
+				sb.append(c);
+			}
+		}
+		return sb.toString();
+	}
+
 	public static String trimUnicodeSurrogateCharacters(String text) {
 		if (StringUtils.isBlank(text)) {
 			return null;