Why do macs replace quotation marks with & quot

[dfh88]

As per title, quite often I will post an ad on gumtree or something, maybe copying some text with quotation marks in it, when I look back at it all the quotation marks have been replace with & quot.

I'm using Firefox on a 2020 M1 Macbook air with Sonoma 4.6.1, UK keyboard, UK language settings. As far as fas as I can remember this odd behaviour has affected every mac I've ever used over the years.

 

[Slartibart]

you copy said quoted text from which program?

 

[frou]

" is an HTML thing so it's likely more to do with the web browser or web site than with macOS itself. It's not really clear from your post which direction you're copy/pasting to/from with regards to other applications.

 

[dfh88]

I'm usually using Firefox and will copy and past within Firefox itself, or it will happen when I describe the size of something in inches using a single quotation mark. It may be a Firefox issue.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Are you pasting into a Web form?
Does it occur with all browsers?

To me, it sounds like input sanitization:

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How to Use Input Sanitization to Prevent Web Attacks

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Basically, you remove or replace unnecessary and possibly malicious text characters.