The root cause of this issue is pretty simple. Most email programs, when configured to use HTML format, automatically turn URLs and email addresses into hyperlinks, with the display text the same as what it links to. This happens both when typed by the user and when replying to a plain-text email. Possibly also when copying and pasting. When you reply to an HTML email in plain text, Thunderbird turns "<a href="mailto:me@example.com">Email me</a>" into "Email me <mailto:me@example.com>". Unfortunately, the programer neglected to make it check whether the display text is the same as the href (or the same with 'mailto:' or 'http://' or 'http://www.' in front or '/' behind). It's pretty simple to fix, so why has it taken 7 years so far for anyone to get round to it?
Bug 780365 Comment 31 Edit History
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The root cause of this issue is pretty simple. Most email programs, when configured to use HTML format, automatically turn URLs and email addresses into hyperlinks, with the display text the same as what it links to. This happens both when typed by the user and when replying to a plain-text email. Possibly also when copying and pasting. When you reply to an HTML email in plain text, Thunderbird turns "<a href="mailto:me@example.com">Email me</a>" into "Email me <mailto:me@example.com>". Unfortunately, the programmer neglected to make it check whether the display text is the same as the href (or the same with 'mailto:' or 'http://' or 'http://www.' in front or '/' behind). It's pretty simple to fix, so why has it taken 7 years so far for anyone to get round to it?