In May there were major stories that on July 9 many people would lose use of the Internet due to malware and a server run by the FBI being shutdown. July 9 will be here Monday and USA Today has a big story presenting big fear of Monday. Yahoo presents it much more rationally. If you have not updated your anti-virus and anti-spyware software recently, do so. if you have not run a full scan run them now. Contrary to USA Today malware can be detected and cleaned without reinstalling Windows. I have cleaned thousands of machines of malware. If a scan by both with updated definitions finds no problems you should be fine Monday. I suggest using for anti-virus AVG (free), Norton and Trend Micro. There are other good ones also. For spyware i suggest superantispyware which is free.
If the program is still on your computer Monday you will not be disconnected from the Internet you will just not be able to go to sites you have not been to recently (the addresses still stored in your machine). DNS is the program on the Internet that allows us to use words for names of web sites instead of number addresses. DNS looks up the number address for the names. These are not real numbers in my following example. To go to my web site not using DNS you would have to know and type in a number like 192.168.2.1, using DNS you can just type in www.dwightwatt.com and DNS figures out it is 192.168.2.1 and goes and gets the page. DNS is what made the Internet usable by the masses starting in early 1990s. Prior you had to use numbers and only geeks used it since invention in 1969.
Below is the column I wrote on May 2nd about this malware program called DNSChanger
Last weekend there were scary stories in the press where the FBI was saying DNSChanger is gonna kill the Internet on July 9, 2012. It is not infected everyone and the good antivirus and antispyware programs that people have kept updated have detected and cleaned it. Here is a story that I think presents a decent approach and explains why it was overblown. I have read these people articles for many years and gotten many tips from them on Windows and Office. http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/dnschanger-is-not-the-end-of-the-world/
Dwight
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