Why should not write 2020 into 20?

The abbreviation 2020 will save you less than a second but it can cause you to lose a lot of things if the bad guys use it to cheat.

What seemed like a joke turned out to be the auditors' serious advice. 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 change the date "1/1/20" on a document to "1/1/2000" or "1/1/2021".

Picture 1 of Why should not write 2020 into 20?
Stopping the abbreviation of the number of years can help you avoid document fakes - (Image: KESQ).

According to Dusty Rhodes - an auditor working in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States - writing all four numbers of the year does not take much time but can help protect us from the hassle. regarding the paperwork later.

Professor Ira Rheingold - executive director of the Association of American Consumer Advocates - believes that there will be many types of paper fraud cases in 2020. He sent an email to USA Today's office a few days ago warning a threat that scammers could use this method to set up an unpaid debt or try to cash a check. old.

"Suppose you agree to pay starting on January 15, 2020. The bad guy can correct the number of years you start making debt on January 15, 2019. So, even if you want to argue, you can't because "clear black and white paper" , Rheingold writes.

Or the bad guy can fix a check expired on "1/1/20" to "1/1/2021" , then use it to pay. This method can also turn an overdue debt into still in progress.

The target audience will be not only citizens but also financial and banking companies. The easy solution is that for all papers, write down the date and time: January 15, 2020, and never write 1/15/20.

The East Millinocket Police Department in Maine agrees with these opinions and recommends that people carefully scrutinize the date when signing any legal document to avoid trouble later.