diff --git a/plugins/content/emailcloak/emailcloak.php b/plugins/content/emailcloak/emailcloak.php
index 503f507430b11..d6266af9ae225 100644
--- a/plugins/content/emailcloak/emailcloak.php
+++ b/plugins/content/emailcloak/emailcloak.php
@@ -479,8 +479,12 @@ protected function _cloak(&$text, &$params)
 			$text = substr_replace($text, $replacement, $regs[0][1], strlen($regs[0][0]));
 		}
 
-		// Search for plain text email@example.org
-		$pattern = '~' . $searchEmail . '([^a-z0-9]|$)~i';
+		/*
+		 * Search for plain text email addresses, such as email@example.org but not within HTML tags:
+		 * <img src="..." title="email@example.org"> or <input type="text" placeholder="email@example.org">
+		 * The negative lookahead '(?![^<]*>)' is used to exclude this kind of occurrences
+		 */
+		$pattern = '~(?![^<>]*>)' . $searchEmail . '~i';
 
 		while (preg_match($pattern, $text, $regs, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE))
 		{