Yahoo Bans Bad Sites from Search Results

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Yahoo Bans Bad Sites from Search Results

James Joyner | Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Yahoo has taken a major step in removing malicious sites from its search results.

Yahoo Inc. and McAfee Inc. are joining to offer alerts about potentially dangerous Web sites alongside search results generated at Yahoo.com.

With the new security feature — slated to take effect Tuesday — people who search the Internet using Yahoo will see a red exclamation point and a warning next to links McAfee has identified as serving dangerous downloads or using visitors’ e-mail addresses to send out spam. Dangerous downloads can include “adware,” which shows unwanted advertisements; “spyware,” which secretly tracks users’ keystrokes and other actions; and other malicious programs that can give criminals control over users’ computers.

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Yahoo has decided to simply nuke the worst offenders — sites that attempt “drive-by downloads,” or trying to automatically install malicious code on visitors’ computers by exploiting coding flaws in their Web browsers. If McAfee has identified a site as having employed such tactics, Yahoo users won’t see the link at all.

Since Yahoo has only 21 percent of the search engine market, user benefit will be relatively small unless people change their habits in droves. Of course, one would expect market leader Google to step up with a similar feature very soon.

About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.

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