McAfee, Yahoo! Partner on Web Search Security

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

McAfee and Yahoo! announced on Tuesday a new feature for Yahoo! Search which will supposedly make searching safer: the flagging of potentially unsafe Web sites appearing in Yahoo search results.

The initiative uses McAfee’s SiteAdvisor technology to mark risky sites in search results. SiteAdvisor itself is already free, but not having to install it makes life a whole lot easier for those who might move from PC to PC, or even browser to browser.

According to Yahoo!’s press release:

SearchScan will be turned on by default for all users in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain, and will scan for three types of risks in our search index:

• Browser Exploits — These are sites that can stealthily harm a user’s computer or install malware simply by visiting the site. Beginning today, any such sites or pages included in McAfee’s data will be removed from search results automatically.
• Dangerous Downloads — SearchScan will display warnings next to search results for sites that offer potentially dangerous software, such as viruses, spyware or adware. Users often may be unaware that these can be passed along with the screensavers, games and other software downloads.
• Unsolicited Email — SearchScan will alert users to scanned sites that send unsolicited emails or inappropriately share email addresses with third parties.

SearchScan will be on by default but users can turn off or even filter all sites with warnings from their results.

This is a feature that’s been available for some time for Google users, as Google has teamed with StopBadware.org. Interestingly, the site flagged above is not flagged in Google’s results. Who are you supposed to trust?