Those of you who use the McAfee SiteAdvisor plugin for Firefox, will be aware of how McAfee are helping to protect users from malicious sites. The plugin notifies users with a simple colour coding that allows users to visually work out if a website has been reported for malware or spyware attacks. The plugin works with community support - reports being fed to McAfee from users with comments posted on the site’s page detailing the problems they faced.

Well now, McAfee have teamed up with Yahoo, to do a very similar thing on their search results. When you search for a term using Yahoo’s engine, there will be an indication next to the site that identifies it as malware/spyware, if it’s been reported that the website has been up to no good. This should hopefully prevent people from clicking on the link, or at least, make them find out why the site has gained such a reputation. If you already have McAfee’s SiteAdvisor plugin installed, all search engine results are automatically checked anyway, so you won’t gain much. And you have the added advantage of being notified of a malicious site when you’re browsing it. At least the Yahoo deal is a step in the right direction. Read the Yahoo! press release.