When to redact personal data
Passing a contract on for reference, or submitting a copy of a bank book, means the ID and account numbers have to go first. Laying a black rectangle over them does not do it — drag across the area in any reader and the original digits copy straight out.
This works differently. Each page is redrawn as a picture and the boxes are painted onto that picture, so the covered characters are not in the file at all. Everything happens inside your browser.
How to use it
- 1Upload the PDF that needs redacting.
- 2Anything shaped like an ID or account number is marked for you. Check it, and clear it if you disagree.
- 3Drag boxes over anything else that should go.
- 4Press Redact and download, then try selecting that area in the result. Nothing should come out.
Common questions
- How is this different from covering text?
- Edit PDF Text lays a white box on top and the original characters stay in the file — its own guide says so. This tool rebuilds the page as an image, so the characters underneath a box physically do not exist. For anything you send to someone else, use this one.
- I can't search the text afterwards.
- The whole document becomes a picture; that is the price of the guarantee. If you need search back, run Scanned PDF Text Recognition afterwards — what you redacted is already gone and will not come back.
- The automatic marks are in odd places.
- It matches number shapes, so a date or a part number can trip it. Treat it as a prompt for things that are easy to miss; what actually gets removed is your call. Clear all and draw your own if you prefer.
- Does it work on scanned PDFs?
- Yes — draw the boxes and those areas are painted over. Scans carry no text information, so nothing can be found automatically.
- The file got bigger.
- A text document became one picture per page. If size matters, follow up with PDF Compression.