There is a new scam going around via text message. My wife and I were out running some errands on Thursday last week and she got a text message from what appeared to be PNC bank. We don't have a PNC bank account so we knew it was fake right away but, then I was talking with a client on Friday and she got the same message around the same time and thought it was legit.
If you were to click on that link you would be directed to what looks like a legit website that asks for your user name, password, and eventually your social security number. This is a scam trying to collect or phish information out of you to either take money out of your accounts or worse, steal your identify.
How to tell this is a scam? Well there are a few "tells" that give it away. At a quick glance it looks like the message is from PNC, but when you keep reading the email address it came from some other service or website avant.com but in this case is also spoofed or faked. Either way, the person or company this is from is looking kind of sketchy at this point. Then the next tell is that the link is not from PNC.com but it is a bit.ly link. I am not saying all bit.ly links are bad but that service is used to shorten long links like https://www.layer2computers.com/our-blog/scam-alert-pnc-bank-scam-message to short links like this one: https://bit.ly/2P8yodQ that goes to this blog post... You see what I did there? So, since the link is not from PNC.com that is another tell. Other than that you have to just take a second and think "does this look legit" and if you have any doubt call your bank.
I am sending this out in a blog post and in an email in hopes to help stop this from tricking you or someone you may know. Please feel free to share it with your family and friends! We wish you the best of luck and don't just randomly click a link if you are unsure of what it is.
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