IDG, the publishers of PC World have been forced to apologise to Samsung, after falsely claiming that Samsung notebooks, contained keylogger spyware software.Network World, the IDG publication that first claimed that Samsung was obtaining confidential consumer information said last night that a subsequent test by IDG, gave the machines a clean bill of health.

There was no mention as to why IDG reviewers were unable to conduct the test on the Samsung notebooks prior to the original story being written.

Journalist M.E Kaby the writer of the original story said: ” I should have realised that a report that Samsung was installing a keylogger for tracking did not make sense, even though we believed Samsung had admitted as much: keyloggers are inappropriate as monitoring tools for computer activity because they work with keystrokes, not comprehensive logging of extensive useful information. That realisation alone should have warned me that we were likely on a wrong path”.

He added: “When I learned that there was a directory called C:WindowsSL associated with StarLogger, I should have looked further into the situation by asking about files found in the directory”.

He concluded: “I want to make it absolutely clear that Samsung has behaved impeccably. It did absolutely nothing wrong and the company responded to this ill-advised, incorrect analysis with courtesy and calm”.