Yahoo and McAfee – More Secure Web Search Result
Yahoo and McAfee announced a partnership Tuesday under which potentially unsafe Web sites appearing in Yahoo search results will be flagged as risky.
The deal, an exclusive for Yahoo, uses McAfee SiteAdvisor technology to label a variety of potentially dangerous Web sites with red warning text and links to McAfee information about what risks the site poses. Among the triggers for a red warning message are sites that host spyware, adware, or virus-infected downloads; sites that have links to other Web sites with dangerous material; and sites that have a track record of harvesting e-mail addresses later used to send spam, the companies said
The companies declined to reveal the financial terms of the partnership.
The deal represents the latest attempt by Sunnyvale-based Yahoo to lure more search requests, snap out of its recent financial funk and steal advertising dollars from search leader Google Inc. as it tries to justify its rebuff of Microsoft Corp.’s $47.5 billion takeover bid.
Yahoo shares fell 15 percent Monday after Microsoft pulled out of merger talks over the weekend.
The deal gives Santa Clara-based McAfee a way to expose more Internet users to its security software and tempt them to upgrade to premium versions.
McAfee also benefits from teaming with Yahoo because it can use Yahoo’s search data to identify sites to examine for security holes and include within its products, McAfee’s Dowling said.
The McAfee technology being used on Yahoo’s site is a stripped-down version of McAfee’s full SiteAdvisor technology that also is available for free directly from McAfee. It uses red, yellow and green icons to label safe and harmful sites. A premium version adds other features.
Billions of sites have harmful content, and the criminal hackers behind them try relentlessly to manipulate search rankings to boost their links and ensnare more victims.
Yahoo’s Garg said the company was doing experiments to identify malicious sites and bar them from search results.
source:news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080506/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_mcafee
