So much for Consumer Reports

Remember back in the day when Consumer Reports was a reliable source of information about everything from cars to toaster ovens? Yeah, me too. Well, they may still be great when it comes to mechanicals, but don't trust them when it comes to software.

An excerpt from The Consumer Reports Testing Scandal:

"In addition to antivirus programs, Consumer Reports tested antispyware applications. And they have now confirmed that they did not test against any spyware for their antispyware testing. (Feel free to read that sentence again.)

Instead, their entire test of antispyware applications was based on running applications against Spycar, a set of applications written by Intelguardians that mimic antispyware behavior — directly against the explicit instructions of the Spycar developers."

That's right, folks. They rated spyware defense programs without actually testing to see if any of the programs worked against actual spyware. Worse, what they tested against doesn't actually work for that kind of testing.

I'm officially appalled. You can read the rest of the article here. You can read more about the controversy here.</a.