Strange Behaviour In Internet Explorer With Document.links[i].href

I have to change dynamically all hyperlinks, when the html-page is
loaded at the client. This works fine, except in the following scenario:

When the innerText of an anchor contains an '@', the InternetExplorer
changes the innerText-Property to the HREF-Property. I have checked this
with MoZilla/FireBird and Opera and there is no problem!

To explain, what i mean, see following example:
function atTest(){
for(var i=0; i < document.links.length; ++i)
{
document.links[i].href = document.links[i].href;
}

}

Now you need some anchor tags - notice the '@' as inner Text:

<a href="http://www.somelink.org/">Text before @ and after</a><br>
<a href="http://www.somelink.org/">Text before @</a><br>
<a href="http://www.somelink.org/">@ before text</a><br>
<a href="http://www.somelink.org/">Text before at and after</a>


If you load the page, InternetExplorer will display the HREF-Property
instead of "Text before @ and after" - all other elements are shown
correctly! It doesn't bother other browsers: Opera/MoZilla shows _even_
the first element with innerText.

My system: Windows XP SP1, InternetExplorer SP1, Firebird0.7, Opera 7.23

Has anybody out there an idea, why IE behaves like this? And how I can
work around this?