Police Caution Public About Abbreviating The Year 2020 On Documents

Jan 09, 2020 by apost team

Detectives at the East Millinocket Police Department in Maine have issued a warning about abbreviating years to the last two digits because it could open doors to fraudsters.

The warning was posted on social media shortly after New Year's Day, and it has been viewed and shared by millions. It makes a lot of sense, but it has also resulted in accusations of fear-mongering.

Many of us are used to including a date when signing official documents; when we do so, we often write down the date in MM/DD/YY format. We do this because we are far enough into the 21st century, and we don't think anyone is going to get 1/1/20 confused with 1/1/1920.

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The first two digits signal the century and the last two refer to the decade. What the good folks at the aforementioned police department explain is that it is far too easy for a scammer to append two digits to a date we have written; for example, 1/1/20 could be faked into 2019.

Quite a few comments left on the post shared by the East Millinocket Police Department point out that a date such as 12/31/19 could be easily changed to 12/31/1999 by a flimflam artist. While this is correct, it does not justify accusing the cops of being an alarmist bunch.

Con artists would think about forging a date back to the 20th century; that is just too easy for document reviewers to spot. Illicitly backdating to 2019, however, would make more sense to a skilled fraudster.

What do you think about this situation? Should we be paying more attention to the abbreviations we write down on official documents? Pass this information along. We really can't be too cautious these days.