Secure Document Prep
Strip, redact, stamp, and shrink a sensitive document before you email it — without uploading it anywhere.
Step-by-step recipe
Black out what they don’t need
Search for account numbers, your address, and other people’s names, and let the detectors catch emails, phone numbers, US Social Security numbers, card numbers, and IBANs. Redacted pages are rebuilt so the text is gone, not covered.
Stamp ID copies with their purpose
A passport scan that says “For Acme Lettings, 12 Elm St only · Oct 2026” is hard to pass off for anything else. The stamp repeats across the page at 32% opacity by default, so your details stay readable underneath.
Or do it all in one pass
Prepare a Document to Send removes hidden details, redacts, stamps, and compresses together, then re-checks the finished file before you download it. Removing hidden details is always on. Redaction and compression start on, and the stamp starts off.
Why the steps run in this order
- Redact before you stamp. Stamping a PDF rebuilds every page as an image, and search can’t read an image. Stamp first and the redactor finds no text, so every account number has to be boxed by hand.
- Stamp IDs, not every document. The stamp turns every page of a PDF into a picture, so nothing on a stamped bank statement can be selected or copied. If the recipient needs to copy figures out of it, redact only and leave the stamp off.
- Don’t skip the hidden details, even when nothing on the page is secret. A PDF exported from Word or a bank portal can carry an author name, the software that made it, and an editing history. Every tool here writes a new file without them, and Prepare a Document to Send does it whether you ask or not.
- Compress last. Redacting and stamping rebuild pages as images, which makes the file heavier. In the one-pass tool, turning compression on saves those rebuilt pages at 150 dpi instead of 200, which is still sharp enough to print.
Worked example: A rental application: bank statement, pay stub, and driver’s license
The landlord wants proof of income and ID. You have a 3-page bank statement PDF from your bank’s website, a pay stub PDF, and a phone photo of your driver’s license.
- Bank statement, in Prepare a Document to Send: type your account number exactly as the statement prints it. A US account number isn’t an IBAN, so the detectors won’t catch it on their own. Add the names of anyone you pay regularly. Leave the stamp off and press Prepare file.
- Only pages with boxes are rebuilt as images. If page 3 had nothing to hide, its text stays selectable.
- Pay stub: search for your employee ID and home address. The Social Security number detector marks your SSN if it’s printed in full, like 123-45-6789.
- Driver’s license photo: turn the stamp on and replace the blank in “Copy for ____ only · Oct 2026” with “12 Elm St rental application”. The photo is redrawn from its pixels, so the GPS location your phone saved is not in the copy.
Result: Three files ending in -ready-to-send, each with a report of what was removed and what was re-checked. Send those. Keep the originals to yourself.
What it won’t do
- Search only finds text the PDF actually contains. A scanned page is a picture, so draw boxes over it by hand.
- The detectors know common formats. They can’t know your landlord’s reference number or a name they’ve never seen. Type those in and look at every page before you download.
- Redacted and stamped pages lose their selectable text. That’s what makes the removal permanent.
- A stamp makes a copy harder to reuse. It doesn’t make reuse impossible. Send only what the recipient asked for.
Tips for best results
- Ask what the recipient actually needs before you send a whole statement. Often it’s one page or one number.
- Put the month in every stamp. A copy that says “Oct 2026” looks out of place on an application in March.
- Read every page in the preview before you download. Detectors miss formats they don’t know.
- Send the -ready-to-send copy, never the original.
Questions
Isn’t a black box in a PDF editor enough?
Usually not. A box drawn in most editors sits on top of the text, and anyone can copy the words out from underneath. Here, redacted pages are rebuilt as images, and the Redact PDF tool searches the finished file for every item you marked. If one survived, the download stays locked.
What should the stamp say?
Who it’s for, what for, and when. “For Acme Lettings, 12 Elm St application only · Oct 2026” beats “Copy”. The default text has a blank in it, and the tools won’t export until you fill it in.
Will the stamp make my ID unreadable?
Not at the default 32% opacity. Keep it between 25% and 40% so your name and numbers stay legible underneath. The preview shows exactly what you’ll download.
How small will the file get?
It depends on what’s in it. With compression on and nothing to rebuild, photos inside the PDF are capped at 1600 pixels and text is left alone. Rebuilt pages are saved at 150 dpi. The report shows the size before and after, and says so if the result came out bigger.
Is my document uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is opened, edited, and checked in your browser tab. The counter at the top of each tool shows the bytes the page has sent while you work.