(KYTX) - Tonight is the night computer users need to check their PC for malware.
This after hackers were arrested months ago for affecting hundreds of thousands of computers across the country with a potentially damaging virus.
It's as simple as a click of your mouse…that could save the life of your computer online.
"My email has been hacked before, I didn't appreciate it one bit," says Cari Minishall, a concerned computer owner.
Thousands of people across the country have computers infected with a malicious virus, and they don't even know it yet.
"A bunch of hackers got together and created a piece of malware that changes your settings and so the FBI once aware of that took control of the servers," says Merl Valles, operations manager at Nerd on Call.
570,000 computers were hit by an advertising scam, and fortunately the FBI busted the hacker ring.
Valles says the FBI protected online users everywhere -- but now have to call it quits.
"On July 9th, they will be turning off those servers which will stop your connection to the internet," says Valles.
Those internet servers were set up as temporary safety nets for those with the virus.
Starting at midnight Sunday night, the virus will attack computers infected -- which means no more surfing the web.
But there's a website that can keep you safe: www.dcwg.org is the site allows computer users to see if they have been hit by the bug and fix the problem.
"My advice would be to have good practices on the computer," says Valles. "Make sure you have good security software on your computer and is up-to-date. You run those scans on a regular basis."
It's believed that with the different formatting, Mac computers will remain largely unaffected by the virus.
And if you didn't catch the name of the website, and need to check your PC by the midnight deadline, you can go to cbs19.tv and just click on the Hot Button.
