The Sunnyvale-based company Yahoo has just rolled out SearchScan, a technology developed with the help of McAfee, that provides protection from viruses, spyware and spam, usually delivered through malicious websites. Since some of these pages may be already indexed by Yahoo Search and returned to the user, SearchScan comes to protect you by displaying a warning every time you find such a risky website.

Priyank Garg, Director Product Management, and Graham Mudd, Product Marketing Manager, Yahoo! Search, said that the newly-released function has already been turned on for users of Yahoo Search in the US, Canada, UK, France and some other locations.

In case the feature is not already enabled for you, you can activate it by navigating to the Yahoo Search page, clicking on Options/Preferences and going in the Edit screen of the SearchScan section.

According to the two Yahoo officials, SearchScan protects users from browser exploits, dangerous downloads and unsolicited email, something similar to Google's malware protection provided in partnership with StopBadware.org.

"With SearchScan, our goal is to protect users by allowing them to make a more informed decision about the websites they visit. By displaying prominent warnings next to search results for sites with potentially dangerous downloads or unsavory email practices, users are aware that while visiting the site may be safe, downloading a file or sharing an email address could be risky," the two Yahoo employees described the latest addition to Yahoo Search.

As you can see in the picture attached to the article, the red exclamation sign displayed near a risky website is accompanied by the following message: "Please use caution before downloading anything at this site. Downloads may contain a virus and other undesirable software." Moreover, Yahoo displays a "Site Owner Support" link that helps website owners, who think their website was mistakenly flagged as harmful, contact the company and remove the warning.