Redact PDF Online - Permanently Remove Sensitive Information

Redaction is not the same as drawing a black box

Drawing a black rectangle over text in a PDF viewer only covers it. The text is still in the file underneath, and anyone can select, copy or search it. Real redaction removes the underlying content so it cannot be recovered. This is the most common way sensitive information leaks from shared PDFs.

How PDFNEO redacts a page

You draw blackout boxes over the areas you want to hide. For every page that has a box, PDFNEO renders the page to an image, paints the boxes into the image pixels, and rebuilds that page from the image. The original text layer for that page is not carried into the output, so the covered words are gone rather than hidden.

Pages without any redaction are copied across unchanged.

What to expect in the output

• Redacted pages become images: their text is no longer selectable or searchable. Run OCR PDF afterwards if you need searchable text back (the blacked-out areas stay blank).
• Redacted pages can make the file larger. Compress PDF helps.
• Only the areas you draw are redacted. Check every page for names, numbers and addresses that appear more than once.
• Document properties such as author and title are a separate matter. Review them with Edit PDF Metadata.

Verify after redaction

Open the result and try to select and copy text from a redacted area, then search for a redacted word. Open it in a second viewer as well. If nothing comes back, the content is gone. Because redaction runs in your browser, the original document is never uploaded; see are online PDF tools safe? for what to check on other sites.