Resurgence of old school phishing?

[Michael Masse]

I've been seeing an increase in the old school type of phishing where a link provided does not go to where the user is led to believe.   MS was always great at catching these in the past, but recently some have been slipping through.   I don't know if what I'm seeing is anything new or not, but I don't know enough about MS's phishing detection engine to determine what to do about this at this point.    The ones that are getting through contain something like this: 
 
validate your account by CLICKING HERE <some lame url>

and the "CLICKING HERE" portion ends up being clickable.  I always thought to create an html link you needed an href.   Something like: 

validate you account by <a href="some lame url">CLICKING HERE</a>

I'm really not sure how the email client knows what portion is clickable in the first example, but 3 separate clients all do the same thing.    Has this always been the case?   Does MS account for it?

-Mike