Just as Microsoft is walking away from a deal with Yahoo!, the search engine is announcing plans to make its services more secure by using McAfee technology. Red warning messages may soon start showing up next to questionable or dangerous site links in a yahoo search. Apparently, Google started this over a year ago in February 2007.

Another interesting factoid from the original article:

Citing a March 2008 survey conducted by marketing research services provider Decipher, Yahoo and McAfee claim that 65% of Americans online are more worried about clicking unsecured search listings than the threat of neighborhood crime, getting one’s wallet stolen, or e-mail scams. Unfortunately, Decipher hasn’t posted this survey online, making it harder to divine why so many people supposedly prefer being pistol-whipped and robbed to a malware infection.

Being as I live in Oakland, California, an area known for serious crime, I think those results are pretty funny. I don’t worry so much about malware (maybe it’s just cuz I have a Mac), but I do worry about getting mugged–though I never have. But maybe the people surveyed were from safe, suburban and rural towns, living in cozy sprawling homes where they keep their front doors unlocked.

Maybe now when they tuck their kids in at night, they’ll feel a bit safer when they go downstairs and look stuff up online.