Abbreviating the year 2020 will save you less than 1 second, but it can cost you a lot if it is used by bad guys to cheat.
What seemed like a joke turned out to be serious advice from the auditors. Accordingly, 2020 is a special year that should not be abbreviated from “2020” to “20” because the bad guys specializing in forging documents can easily change and use them to harm others. They are very easy to fix the “1/1/20” date on a document to “1/1/2000” or “1/1/2021”.
Stopping year abbreviations can save you from document forgers – (Image: KESQ).
According to Dusty Rhodes – an auditor working in Hamilton County, Ohio, USA – writing out the full 4 digits of the year doesn’t take long but can help protect us from problems related to the year. related legal proceedings.
Professor Ira Rheingold – executive director of the American Association of Consumer Advocates – believes that in 2020 there will be many cases of this type of document fraud. He sent an email to the USA Today newsroom a few days ago warning of the risk that scammers could use this method to establish an outstanding debt or attempt to cash a check. old.
“Let’s say you agree to pay starting on January 15, 20. The bad guy can correct the variable number of years you started owed on January 15, 2019. So, even if you want to argue, you can’t because “white paper with black ink” is clear,” Rheingold wrote.
Or the bad guy can change a check that expires “1/1/20” to “1/1/2021” , and then use it to pay. This method can also turn a delinquent debt into a current one.
The target audience will not only be people but also financial and banking companies. The very easy solution is that for all documents, the full date should be written: January 15, 2020, absolutely no 1/15/20.
The East Millinocket Police Department in the state of Maine agrees with these ideas and recommends that residents check the dates when signing any legal documents to avoid trouble later.