PDF Redaction

Many authorities, landlords and employers want to see documents that contain more than they need to know. The classic is the bank statement: the Jobcenter wants to check income and balance, but not whether you belong to a party, a trade union or are in therapy. So you black things out. Except most programs do it wrong: they put a black rectangle over the text, and the text stays underneath in the file. Anyone who opens the PDF can select the spot, copy it and read everything.

PDF Redaction therefore takes a safe route. Every page on which you marked something is rebuilt as a picture, and the black areas are painted into that picture before it is saved. The original text, the fonts and everything else on that page never make it into the new file. Under the box there is simply nothing left. Pages without boxes are carried over unchanged and stay searchable. The price: on redacted pages the text can no longer be selected or searched afterwards. We tell you that up front.

You can mark in two ways. Drag boxes with mouse or finger over everything that should go, move them and resize them at the corners. Or let the tool search: type a name, a customer number or another word, and the tool marks every spot in the whole document. For common cases there are ready-made searches, such as all IBANs, all amounts, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, the tax ID or the social security number.

Afterwards the tool also cleans up what you cannot see. Author, title and program details, hidden extra details (XMP), comments, links, attached files, bookmarks and embedded scripts are not carried into the new file. Filled form fields stay visible as text but are no longer fields. Your original file is never changed; the new file is always named like the original with the suffix "-geschwärzt".

Finally comes the step other tools leave out: the check. PDF Redaction reads the finished file back in and searches for every word that stood under your boxes. On the redacted pages the result must be zero matches, otherwise the file cannot be saved at all. If a word also appears on a page you did not mark, the tool tells you and blacks it out there too if you want.

In Jobcenter mode the tool explains what the Federal Social Court said about redacting bank statements (judgment of 19.09.2008, B 14 AS 45/07 R): for payments out, the recipient and payment reference may be blacked out when they reveal a party, union, religion, health or something similarly personal. Amounts, dates, incoming payments and the balance must stay readable. The tool warns when a box covers an amount or a date and asks a short checklist before saving. It is a technical aid, not legal advice: the tool does not decide what you have to disclose in your case. If in doubt, ask the Jobcenter or a social counselling service.