Police have issued a warning over a new '2020 abbreviation scam'

You may have seen the warning about a 2020 scam floating around on social media and it turns out there could be some truth behind it.

National Association of Consumer Advocates in the US has advised people to be careful when filling out official or legal documents to no abbreviate the year 2020 to just ’20’ when writing the date.

One warning from the East Millinocket Police Department, in particular, has gone viral online

"This is sound advice and should be considered when signing any legal or professional document. It could potentially save you some trouble down the road," they wrote alongside the warning.

So why the big fuss?

Apparently not writing the full year could leave documents open to being tampered with and people open to financial fraud.

This is how it works: On a document, if you write "6/1/20" instead of "6/1/2020" the date can be easily changed by anyone after the document has been signed by simply adding two numbers to the end, for example, "6/1/2021" or "6/1/2019" an so on.

While there are yet to be any reports of people being scammed in this manner, it’s better to be safe than sorry, right?