Yahoo! has partnered with McAfee to integrated the security firm’s SiteAdvisor technology in Yahoo! search results. That means Yahoo! will remove some of the most dangerous sites from search results altogether, and will include highly visible warning messages on search listings that force downloads, include browser exploits, or sites that send unsolicited emails.
Google offers a similar service, through a partnership with Stop Badware. But Google doesn’t check for web sites that initiated automatic downloads when you load them, or sites that include links to harmful web pages. Yahoo!’s new SearchScan feature does.
SearchScan will be turned on by default for Yahoo! users in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and Spain. You can turn it off by visiting the SearchScan settings page.