It sounds like one of those rumors that seem to be created by anti-virus software companies to sell their software, a terrifying warning that in 48 hours all of your programs will stop working and your address book will be sent to some shadowy organization in Eastern Europe to analyze, but in fact the DNSChanger malware is a legitimate problem and is known -- through dissecting and analyzing the code -- to be poised to effectively disable your ability to look up any domain names starting on Monday, July 9, 2012.

Without the ability to look up domains using the Domain Name System (DNS) your computer will indeed be effectively cut off from the Internet, and restarting or unplugging and re-plugging in your modem won't solve a thing.

Not good.

Here's how you can test to see if you've been infected by DNSChanger, and if so, what you can do to remedy the situation...