OWA treatment of URLs in body of message

[Guest]

We're seeing a strange and inconsistent behavior when OWA users imbed URLs in
their messages. If they include something like:

http://mysite.domain.com/xyz.htm

in their message, the recipient's browser takes them to
https://myexchangeserver/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://mysite.domain.com/xyz.htm

This doesn't seem to do any harm in the OWA environment. However, this
sometimes shows up as a double redirect:
https://myexchangeserver/exchweb/bi...edir.asp?URL=http://mysite.domain.com/xyz.htm

This even shows up in Outlook 2003 (and 2007) clients, as well as for
recipients in gmail, etc. The result is that the recipient can't follow the
hyperlink because they are challenged for an Exchange username and password.

Is this a bug or a feature and how can it be avoided?

 

[Guest]

Someone pointed out the following link to me. It seems related but applies
only to references back to the Exchange server. My question has to do with
links to external (unrelated) servers.

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/07/26/197289.aspx