Vulnerable young minds were nearly exposed to an eye-popping smut gallery by Yahoo!'s image search – running in safe mode.

A school in Shanghai was set to ask students to enter “www” as a search term as part of a class project about the internet. On a dry run however, the teacher noticed the search via both yahoo.com and yahoo.co.uk produced an array of net sleaze, along with a picture of a car full of bloody animal carcasses.

Ray Miles, network coordinator at the British school said: “These adult images were not entirely what the teacher at the school was hoping to see when doing some research on the World Wide Web, and it is a good job he brought it to our attention before the senior school was let loose on this project! Needless to say we have banned the students from accessing Yahoo! until further notice!”

The school contacted Yahoo! to complain. The company acknowledged the problem and said it had “escalated the issue to our engineering team for review”.

A spokesperson told The Reg: “Yahoo! is aware of this issue and is working to resolve it as quickly as possible.”

Just nobody tell the kids.®