Invisible hyperlinks in received emails?

[AC Question]

Invisible hyperlinks in received emails.

I have a Galaxy S4 running Lollipop (Android v5.0.1) and I'm using the stock Email app (v5.0.0200) for emails connected to an Exchange server. Just today I noticed the hypertexting that occurs when I receive an email that contains times (ex: '4:30') or keywords like 'tonight' or 'tomorrow' are now invisible (white text on a white background). I'm able to view the text by attempting to select it for copying or if I reply to the email, I can scroll down to view the original text and it's no longer hypertexted. I can also click on the blank/missing text and it launches the stock Calendar event, but that's misleading as it interprets 4:30 as 4:30am and bizarrely decides 'tonight' means 8pm. I did a search for other emails containing the word 'tomorrow' and found an email within the last couple of weeks that shows the word 'tomorrow' as blue text and underlined in blue. I haven't changed any settings recently. I just tried clearing the cache on both Email and Calendar and then restarting the phone, all to no avail.

Ideas?

 

[Crashdamage]

Re: Invisible hyperlinks in received emails.

Hyperlinks hidden in text or images are nothing new and are common in both spam and legitimate emails. For instance, you might get an email from a business that if the click on their logo a link hidden in the logo takes you to their website. So they can be used for good or for evil.

Not too much you can do about it except filter spam and be careful what you click on. Clearing caches, restarting or even factory resetting the phone has nothing to do with it. The links are in the email, not on your phone or in any apps on it.


Android since v1.0. Linux since 2001.