I've had this argument before. It's still one of the most infected sites on the net.
Until very recently, well after that declaration was made, a certain P2P application was available which contained over 20 different infection sources.
I have no reason to believe that CNet have cleaned up their act to any degree over this issue and would advise punters to avoid it.
There are many clean alternatives.
"Every time a new file is submitted to the CNET Download.com site through Upload.com, our editors download, install, and scan the program using up to three industry-standard anti-spyware tools: currently these include Lavasoft Ad-Aware, Webroot Spy Sweeper, and PC-Tools Spyware Doctor".
Let's look at that statement.
Their editors test the software? What do these editors know about malware?
How are these tools set up and under what conditions?
Up to three? So that's just the one then.
Spyware tools? I really hope that they mean anti spyware tools, whatever they may be. Very little in the way of spyware is in the wild - I see hundreds of infected machines in the course of a month and very few contain what can actually be termed as spyware.
The more astute here will note that no mention of general malware, trojans, adware, hijackers or viri is made.
Some disclaimer that turned out to be!
