Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona is warning businesses and consumers of fraudulent solicitations from scam artists posing as real law firms online. The FBI says it has received numerous reports from legitimate attorneys who say their firms’ identities have been stolen online.

The FBI is asking that anyone who becomes aware of one of these fraudulent websites report them promptly to their state Bar Association, and to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.IC3.gov.

If you receive a suspicious solicitation from an attorney, BBB recommends consumers and businesses check their status with BBB by visiting, www.tucson.bbb.org/Find-Business-Reviews, and with the State Bar of Arizona by visiting www.azbar.org/findalawyer. Any attorney practicing in Arizona must register with the State Bar.

It’s also recommended that businesses and consumers use the contact information provided to them- by BBB or the State Bar- to contact the attorney to make sure they’re the same firm that initially solicited them.

For more business and consumers news and alerts, visit www.tucson.bbb.org.

UPDATE: BBB was contacted by a Tucson attorney who said that in addition to being registered with the State Bar, any Attorney soliciting business in Arizona must include the following disclosure in their solicitation:

“NOTICE: This email and its attachments may contain PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL information and is intended only for the use of the specific individual to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential under state, federal and tribal law. This email is specifically covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §2510-2521. This email may contain attorney-client privileged information or work product information and is intended only for the use of the individuals named herein. This information may be used or disclosed only in accordance with the law and you may be subject to penalties under the law for improper use or further disclosure of the information in this email and its attachments. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify the person named above by reply email and then delete the original email. Thank you.“

Hundreds of thousands of Internet users may lose their online access on July 9, 2012, and Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona is urging all consumers and businesses to run a quick and easy diagnostic test to see if their computers are infected.

“Everyone should check to see if their computer is infected,” urged Kim States, BBB President. “It takes less than a minute to check and, if your equipment is clean, there is nothing more you need to do. If your computer is infected, the DNS Changer Working Group recommends the necessary steps to save your computer. But this must be done by July 9^th or you could lose internet access.”

The FBI’s DNS Changer Working Group can detect the malware and explain how to fix infected machines.

Last November, the FBI took down the servers of international hackers operating out of Estonia. The hackers had already successfully downloaded malware onto more than half a million computers, turning off virus updates and redirecting consumers to fraudulent websites.

If the servers had simply been shut down, the victims’ computers would no longer be able to access the internet. 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.

Originally the rescue servers were to be active until March, but a court ruling extended the program until July 9^th. At that time the clean servers will be turned off and anyone who is still infected with the malware will lose their internet access. The FBI believes there are still about 360,000 infected computers in a dozen countries, including the U.S. and Canada.

The FBI is warning that some computer users may lose Internet access this July when they shut down a software program that was launched months ago to combat an Internet virus.

From the Arizona Republic:

“Unknown to most of them (Internet users), their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.

The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they’re infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won’t be able to connect to the Internet.”

Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona strongly recommends consumers check to see if their computer has been affected before the FBI shuts down its program in July.

For more consumer news you can trust visit www.tucson.bbb.org.