IE IQ study was a hoax | Whew! Study was a hoax, IE users not dumb after all

NEW DELHI: Take heart, all you who use Internet Explorer. It turns out "the study" that linked a user's browser choice to his IQ was an elaborate hoax. It fooled us. As well hundreds of other media organizations including BBC, Guardian, CNN and Telegraph.

Two days after the study was widely cited in media across the world, the person behind the hoax wrote on www.aptiquant.com, "There is no company called AptiQuant, and no such survey was ever done". Earlier, AptiQuant had claimed that it surveyed over 1 lakh Web users and found that Opera users were smartest while IE users "have a below than average IQ score."


The hoax was allegedly perpetrated by a computer programmer named Tarandeep Gill. According to Gill, who is based in San Francisco in the US, the website for AptiQuant was registered only few weeks before the hoax and the names and biographies of staff members were picked from the website of a real company in France.

Gill says that while creating his 'real' website, which allows users to compare deals at various shopping sites, he realized how difficult it is for a Web developer to support Internet Explorer 6.

"So, frustrated with Internet Explorer, I went on to create a meme that would result in some awareness and hopefully convince a few Web users to stop using it," Gill wrote on AptiQuant. However, after our brush with the hoax we will advise you to take whatever Gill says with a grain of salt.

Gill claimed "the main purpose behind this hoax was to create awareness about the incompatibilities of Internet Explorer 6, and not to insult or hurt anyone".

"But what's really funny is that everybody took the report so seriously, with comments like 'Oh did we need such a study, we already knew that," wrote Gill.


IE IQ study was a hoax | Whew! Study was a hoax, IE users not dumb after all