Hidden InkGuide · Privacy
Remove personal data from PDFs
Whether it's a contract, invoice, medical letter, payslip or utility bill, most PDFs you're asked to share contain more personal data than the recipient needs. Removing it properly means two things: the data must be genuinely destroyed (not hidden), and the document shouldn't be uploaded to some server in the process. Here's how to do both.
The personal data hiding in ordinary PDFs
Beyond the obvious name and address, PDFs routinely carry: account and reference numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers and emails, national identifiers (NI numbers, SSNs, SINs, TFNs), salary figures, medical details, and signatures. Scanned documents also hide an invisible OCR text layer that survives cosmetic edits.
Deleting text in an editor can also leave traces in the file structure, and 'flattening' alone doesn't remove text objects. True removal replaces the page content.
Free removal, entirely in your browser
Hidden Ink's manual mode is free and unlimited: upload the PDF (it stays on your device), draw boxes over anything personal, move and resize them until coverage is right, then export. The export rebuilds each redacted page with the boxed content destroyed.
For long documents, AI detection finds personal data for you — names, addresses, account numbers, national IDs, contact details and more — across up to 50 pages combined per $2.99 batch, with region-aware detection for UK, US, Canadian and Australian identifiers. Every suggestion is reviewed by you before anything is redacted.
Step-by-step
Step 1
Upload the PDF to the editor
Processed locally in your browser. Batch multiple files — pricing pools pages across all of them.
Step 2
Mark personal data
Draw boxes manually (free) or run AI detection with a preset that fits your purpose.
Step 3
Review and export
Accept or dismiss each suggestion, then export with redactions burned in plus an audit report.
Frequently asked questions
Can I remove personal data from a PDF for free?+
Yes — Hidden Ink's manual redaction is free, unlimited and runs entirely in your browser with nothing uploaded.
Does removing text from a PDF really delete it?+
Only with true redaction. Hidden Ink destroys the content in redacted regions on export; ordinary black boxes or highlighter marks leave the text recoverable.
What about scanned PDFs with no selectable text?+
On-device OCR reads scanned pages so the AI can flag personal data; manual boxes work on any page regardless.
Which identifiers can the AI detect?+
Names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, dates of birth, account and card numbers, and national identifiers — with regional tuning for UK (NI numbers, sort codes), US (SSNs, routing numbers), Canada (SINs) and Australia (TFNs, Medicare).
Redact your PDF now — free
Manual redaction is free and unlimited. AI-assisted detection is $2.99 for up to 50 pages combined across all your PDFs.
Start Redacting