All banks and their clients can be targets of phishing emails. Pinnacle clients called in recently about a bill payment message addressed from "PNC Bank." Pinnacle Financial Partners is not affiliated with PNC Bank and does not believe at this time these were specifically targeted at our clients. However, these are our top three tips to recognize phishing emails:

• Know that clicking hyperlinks and attachments from unknown sources can corrupt your PC. You can help protect your machine by using updated Internet Security and Antivirus software. In this case, the email wasn’t from a known source affiliated with PNC Bank.
   
• Does the activity described match your own or what you would have expected? If not, pick up the phone and call your trusted contact (not the number given in the email). Likely the bill payment entry described doesn’t match actual activity if you check your online banking.
   
• Understand how to decipher hyperlinks by hovering over the link without clicking to see where its being redirected. 

Pinnacle assembled a short webinar to help you understand how to detect and deter these sorts of attacks. Click here to read the article or watch the short webinar.

Remember: Pinnacle will never contact you and ask you to provide sensitive information about yourself or your account.