Now Yahoo! is libelling us

Now the search engine Yahoo! is defaming Tech-Pro.net and destroying our reputation by describing our site as a "potentially harmful website" and marking every search result from any of our domains with a red notice that says: "Warning: Dangerous Downloads." This is destroying our business and causing serious permanent harm to our reputation as a trusted site. And all because of a false detection of malware by McAfee's SiteAdvisor malware scanner, as I described in my previous blog posting.

What makes this even more serious than the defamation by McAfee itself is that the libellous accusation will be seen not just by those who have installed the SiteAdvisor plugin in their web browser, but by every user of Yahoo! Search in the US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Spain - a list which happens to include the sources of most of our traffic.

As described in the SiteAdvisor Blog on 20 May, Yahoo! has partnered with McAfee to incorporate site safety ratings into its search results. Which would be a great idea, if the site safety ratings were to be trusted. Unfortunately in implementing its safety tests McAfee has overlooked one basic fact that anyone familiar with anti-malware scanners knows: that these products often give false positives. They often flag files as containing malware when they don't. And McAfee appears not to have built any checks into its system. It is passing verdict on the safety or otherwise of websites based on the results of just one anti-malware scanner - McAfee's. This is technically indefensible and criminally irresponsible. It is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The result of this is that any user of Yahoo! Search will find all the search results from tech-pro.net and related domains look like this:

I can't imagine that this will have any effect other that to cause people to avoid that search result, causing immediate harm to our business and long-term damage to our reputation.

I have used the Yahoo! Search contact form to send the following message:

"Yahoo is defaming my website domain tech-pro.net by claiming that it contains dangerous downloads. This allegation has been made by McAfee Site Advisor. It is a false positive. See my blog posting at http://blog.tech-pro.net/entry/47/McAfee_defamation_of_Tech-Pron for full description of the matter including proof that the file Site Advisor claims to be infected does not contain spyware.

This red warning above the search results for tech-pro.net is causing serious harm to our business and is a serious slur on our reputation. The longer this appears on your site the greater the damage that is being done. If this libellous warning is not removed within 24 hours we will be instructing our attorneys to take legal action against Yahoo! Inc for compensation for loss of business and damage to our reputation.

Please reply IMMEDIATELY acknowledging receipt of this communication.

Julian Moss, BSc.
Managing Director: Tech-Pro Ltd."

Tech-Pro Limited does not really have the resources to take on Yahoo! and McAfee, but we'll be out of business very soon unless we do something. Watch this space - and if you can do something to help us, please do so.

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