As we are all getting used to writing the date for the new year, keep the following in mind!
We have a decade of having to write 20_ _. May as well be safe and start writing it out from the beginning. Authorities are warning that shortening “2020” to just “20” when writing the date could leave you vulnerable to fraud. Instead of abbreviating, just write out the whole date as it keeps scammers from forging the date on documents and paperwork. Some may be skeptical of this issue but for example, if there’s a stale check laying around that’s dated 1/7/20, someone could find it and easily alter the date to 1/7/2021. Just like that, the check is no longer stale. The same can be done with any contract. If you sign a credit contract and date it 1/7/20, the lender could easily add “19” to the end of that date and claim you owe more than a year’s worth of payments. In either situation, the result is not something very pleasant for the one who abbreviated the date. In the end, as a safety precaution to your bank account, credit, and everything else super important – write out the whole date. There’s no evidence of this type of scamming yet but better to be safe than sorry, and it likely won’t be much longer until someone tries the trick.
