Yahoo Image Search Is Spiked With Porn

Wednesday, 15 December 2010 02:25

Yahoo Image Search Is Spiked With Porn

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It’s been a really bad day at Yahoo. Today, the company handed out over 500 pink slips to employees, laying off 4% of its workforce less than two weeks before Christmas. And now there’s something seriously off with its image search: do a query for just about anything, click an image result, and there’s a good chance you’ll be looking at some very graphic pornography.

The photo that appears is a

closeup shot of a man and a woman fornicating. I’d post a blurred out photo, but the result would just be a giant blur. Suffice to say, there’s no question that this is XXX-rated. To be clear, this appears to only happen when you click an image result that appears alongside Web results (i.e. images linked from the main search page, not the dedicated image search).

And it’s not like this is a freak occurrence — I’ve had the same photo show up for queries for “puppy photos” “car photos” and “TechCrunch photos”.

This could be the work of a disgruntled former employee, or it could be the result of a bizarre glitch (less likely). We’re reaching out to Yahoo to find out more.

Thanks to the folks at Zurb for the tip.

Update: This issue has been going on for at least 30 minutes now, which is far longer than I expected it to last. And it’s a big deal — it’s affecting a lot of people. According to the counter on the image, as of 5:56 PM PST it has been viewed 192,082 times.
Top image by Adrian Wallett