Thousands May Lose Internet July 9th - KAUZ-TV: Newschannel 6 Now | Wichita Falls, TX

Thousands may lose internet access Saturday, but there is an easy fix. Better Business Bureau officials urge consumers and business owners to run a simple diagnostic test to see if they are affected.

The reason for this is last November; the FBI took down the servers of international hackers operating out of the country. The hackers had already successfully downloaded malware onto more than half a million computers, turning off virus updates and redirecting consumers to fraudulent websites mostly undetected.

If the servers had simply been shut down, the victims' computers would no longer be able to access the internet, so instead, the FBI set up clean servers to replace the ones that were running the scam, and victims have been redirected to those clean servers ever since, usually without any knowledge they'd been infected in the first place.

The FBI has set up a DNS Changer Working Group for consumer to go to and check to see if their computer is infected. If your computer is infected, the DNS Changer Working Group recommends the necessary steps to save your computer and all of this must be done by July 9th or you could lose internet access.