Spyware blockers: Yahoo! Anti-Spy Toolbar

Yahoo! is now offering an spyware blockers toolbar for Microsoft Internet Explorer. This seems to be the very beginning of the toolbar wars, with Google and Yahoo! just starting to duke it out to see which one can provide the most attractive additional browser functionality and drive more searches its way.

The actual spyware blockers engine offered on the Yahoo! Anti-Spy Toolbar is the same one that PestPatrol from Computer Associates International uses (I discuss PestPatrol earlier in this chapter). But the delivery mechanism is unique enough that we thought it was worth mentioning.
Browser toolbars are nothing new. In fact, some of the spyware out there passes itself off as a helpful toolbar doing something that you might want, like posting your search to multiple search engines and sorting out the duplicates. In reality, these toolbars are also snooping where you go on the Internet and what you search for and sending all that information off to their masters.
The Yahoo! Toolbar is just what it says it is, a simple toolbar with a spyware checker embedded in it. While Yahoo! is so nicely helping you out with your spyware problem, it’s also providing one-click access to the Yahoo! search engine and various other Yahoo! sites, such as e-mail, games, and shopping. I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb when I say you should expect to see similar anti-spyware offerings from other major search site players, such as MSN and Google.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if Yahoo! Toolbar will block its own advertisers’ spyware (or at least what other, neutral, programs you would call spyware). This seems like kind of a fox-and-henhouse situation to me.

Also check out:
Ten Spyware blockers programs for Businesses