I just realized that we have two threads going on this topic.. one or the other should be closed methinks.
Honestly, I personally am also affected by this issue - don’t know about anyone else and haven’t asked - because I tend to mouse over links I get by email before clicking on them and look to see where it goes. I happen to know mandrillapp.com is trusted but for someone else new to my forum who doesn’t know mandrillapp but has my habits would be suspicious to be asked to click a link that says it is one thing but leads me somewhere else.
It’s not a big enough issue for me to want to make any big changes to discourse or to turn off click tracking on mandrill for my sites, but it’s definitely something I am aware of and think about. So having a way to improve this in the emails discourse sends out would be great.