Welcome 2020 — Don’t Cut It Short!

Wednesday, February 5, 2020 – It’s a new decade and a new opportunity for scammers.  So make this New Year’s resolution at the top of your list:  Don’t abbreviate the year.

It’s a pretty simple warning — but an easy oversight to make.  Be diligent about writing the 4-digits for the year 2020 as opposed to abbreviating it to ’20 (as in 1/10/20).

Why?  That 1/10/20 could easily be changed to 1/10/2021 or 1/10/2019.  Writing the full date could possibly protect you from a simple forgery and prevent legal issues on paperwork.

It’s still early in the year for examples of this kind of fraud to emerge, but the National Association of Consumer Advocates say the threat is real.  So we are passing along this public service announcement: When you write a date on a document, don’t shorthand the year 2020 to just “20.” Write out the whole thing (after all, it’s only two more numbers).