BLACKING OUT PARTS OF A PDF SOFTWARE

In no way does this affect the content itself, which is still there under the applied blackening – as a result, a simple tool for marking text and copying the content to another file is enough to know the hidden information. Many tools are not about removing, but covering the relevant parts of the text. The second category of problems associated with redaction is the inefficient blackening of the text of the document itself. In this way, even if confidential information has been saved in the file properties, it will not be available to the viewer. One of the options offered by the FORDATA system is to provide users with possibility to only view the content of documents, without the possibility of downloading them. There are, of course, adequate protection methods.

This is particularly important when sharing entire files, not just their content. As a result, even if we remove the most obvious and visible information from the content of the document, there may be a way to reach it based on the data contained in the properties of the file itself. The first is the lack of awareness that many files, in addition to their main content that we see on the screen, also contain properties (or metadata). Problems related to insufficient or incompetent blackening of documents can be divided into two categories. As many real-life examples show, redacting is not always as easy as it may seem (consider the American report on the death of General Nicola Calipari, for example).

BLACKING OUT PARTS OF A PDF SOFTWARE

Today, most often, the options that are built into the popular software are used but sometimes special tools that promise users professional redaction of data are chosen instead. Properly used blackening is by all means crucial.īlackening transforms data in a digital document in a way that prevents reading of the original content, for example, the identification of a person or specific information contained in the document, by applying a black stripe where the text appears. Administrators and Personal Data Processors are also threatened with severe penalties under the General Personal Data Regulation act in the event of anonymity breach. No one would laugh if their financial data, improperly redacted, got into the wrong hands. Document blackening serves a variety of purposes. It is worth remembering that in the digital version this method, however, is associated with serious threats, and the correct way of using the “digital pen” often needs to be learned. Today, we still use blackout as one of the methods of data protection, yet we also send documents containing non-disclosure content digitally. The above quote from the novel “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller shows the classical practice of sanitizing the content of documents – although presented in a deliberately mocking context – where an unwanted fragment of the text is simply blacked out with a wide black pen. (…) One time he blacked out all but the salutation ‘Dear Mary’ from a letter (…).” (…) To break the monotony he invented games. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. “All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients (…).

What to look for when redacting documents?

Document redaction has many faces – it may turn out that overwriting of the text in our document, which at first glance looks 100% effective, is in fact a trap that exposes our company data.

Blacking out parts of a pdf