2020 scam? Police warn public not to abbreviate year

The new year may give scammers an easy way to forge documents.

Authorities across the country have shared in Facebook posts that you can protect yourself by not abbreviating the year 2020 when you write the date because it can easily be changed.

Writing January 3, 2020 as 1-3-20 can easily be changed simply by adding numbers to the end. A scammer can easily change the year to make it, for example, 2000 or 2021.

The best advice is to write out the full year, police said in the Facebook post. Since being posted on New Year's Day, one post by a police department in Maine has been shared over 5,000 times.