The Tracking-Link Bug That Only Breaks Signed URLs

Short summary

A bug in mail-history's email click tracking silently breaks signed URLs by failing to decode HTML entities (&) before encryption. The root cause: extracted URLs from rendered HTML contain escaped ampersands, which break Laravel signature validation after redirect. A one-line fix using html_entity_decode() solves it; a regression test prevents accidental removal.

• •HTML entities in URL query strings break signed-URL validation when extracted from rendered email HTML without decoding
• •The bug silently fails only for signed URLs (with query params), leaving normal links working—making it hard to catch
• •Solution: decode HTML entities immediately before encryption; test explicitly forbids & to prevent regression

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