I put this in General, rather than the Tech forum, because people need to check it out before Monday.



The Independent

Thousands of people may lose internet service on Monday unless they check their computers for malware that could have taken over their machines a year ago.

The number of infected computers is probably more than 277,000 worldwide. People with infected computers will have to call their service providers for help deleting the malware.

The problem was caused by international hackers who took control of 570,000 computers before the FBI broke up the operation. People can see if their computers are infected at www.dcwg.org.

Thanks for the heads up, Feather.

Purely selfish my dear Coco.
I wouldn't want to lose any of you.

Cleaning up botnet, or prepping servers for 'internet 2'?...

My dear Feather and all, I've been fighting with my ISP since the end of May. I know I've said that I'm going to do away with the company, but I live in a rural area and service options are VERY limited.

I've purchased a wireless gizmo to hook up to my parent's connection as they have few connectivity issues, still they go down and up throughout the day. Maybe that will work.

Since I was off work for the national holiday on Wednesday, I thought I would try to hook up to the wireless gizmo, but Dad parked his ass in front of the computer all day. I could have interrupted him, but I didn't want to. He's my dad.

Mother insists I've done something to my computer to make online access impossible, such as using that black box - the battery backup/urge protector. After all, Century Link is a professional, nationwide, company, so I must have done something to prohibit online access.

As it happens when I called Century Link, they said that my gateway was locked. I don't what that is, nor how to lock it. The stupid thing went down Sunday evening and Thursday evening was the first chance I had to call to try to get up again. They unlocked my gateway.

We'll see.