Quarantine failure: 421 closing connection due to SQL DataAccessException (Incorrect string value)

Products

• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

Some emails cannot be delivered to the Messaging Gateway (SMG) Quarantine and are queued with the message:

421 closing connection due to SQL DataAccessException (Incorrect string value)

This delivery error appears in the Control Center BrightmailLog.log as follows:

Feb 09 2026 17:41:01 [SmtpWorker-10] [QuarantineManager] ERROR - Cannot create a spam message in the database. 
com.symantec.smg.controlcenter.internal.dataaccess.DataAccessException: The text entered uses an encoding system that is not currently supported. Please rewrite the text. ; nested exception is: 
java.sql.SQLSyntaxErrorException: (conn=366) Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x94\x9D\xE2\x99...' for column brightmail.spam_message_summary.from_addr_friendly at row 1

Cause

Messaging Gateway is attempting to insert a message into the quarantine which has a 4 byte emoji character in the sender's email address. For example:

"🚀Rocket Racoon🚀" <[email protected]>

Resolution

The underlying quarantine database table will not accept 4 byte UTF-8 characters. This limitation will be addressed in a future release.