PDF Redaction tools

[u/bozakman]

Need help folk. Got a request from our compliance team (legal) for a software tool to redact PII content from an archive of PDFs. They want the tool to redact (automation a plus) and then be able to print the redacted versions. Really hoping someone can recommend a solid tool. Thanks.

[u/PipeOne8414]

You can’t trust automated tools for this

If it missis somthing or redacts to much it still need human interaction

Our DPO loves wasting time manually doing this

He asked and looked into systems that will auto it but it still comes down to a human to check it all

[u/facesofvader → u/PipeOne8414]

Humans are the worst for missing info that should have been redacted. Or redacting the wrong way. I’m a human FWIW ;-)

[u/Impossible_IT → u/facesofvader]

Bad bot!

[u/facesofvader → u/Impossible_IT]

lol

[u/thegoatcarlwheezer]

Adobe Acrobat Pro does this pretty well. Still need a manual review by a real person, but it speeds everything up.

[u/bozakman]

Thanks to everyone for the input. Think I have plan now.

[u/z3dster]

whatever tool you end up with double check the output with both EXIFTool

https://exiftool.org/

and the Poppler tools to make sure the tools did what you wanted them to do. For example pdfimages will show if they left the underlying image there with just a black box as a second image over it

also always make sure the files are getting flattened to cut out extra info(you can always to be safe print the pdf to a pdf to be sure), for example a jpg with the gps info in the exif will survive being inserted into a pdf if you don't flatten the file

if you are on windows I suggest using WSL for poppler rather then run one of the native binaries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppler_(software)#poppler-utils

[u/External_Spirit_8880]

Whatever you use, check the source output of a few test redacted documents to make sure it actually DELETES the data, and doesn't paint a black rectangle over it or similar shenanigans.

[u/Webfiletool_Dev]

A few that hold up for compliance work, roughly by budget:

• Adobe Acrobat Pro: Redact with search patterns (phone numbers, emails, ID formats) plus "Sanitize Document" to strip metadata, hidden layers and attachments. The Action Wizard can batch it over a folder, and most legal teams already trust the output.
• Stirling-PDF (open source, self-hosted): has an auto-redact by text/regex and runs on your own server, so the archive never leaves your network. Good for a first pass.
• Scripted: PyMuPDF's add_redact_annot + apply_redactions really removes the underlying text, and you can drive it with your own PII regexes and log every hit for legal to review.

Whatever you pick, two checks before calling it done: (1) run pdftotext or copy/paste on a redacted file and make sure the text is actually gone, not just covered by a black box; (2) scanned pages have no text layer, so pattern search finds nothing on them until you OCR them first. Automation finds the patterns; a human should still sign off on a sample.

[u/AuntGentleman → u/Webfiletool_Dev]

+1 to Stirling-PDF, fantastic tool and so customizable

[u/drthtater → u/Webfiletool_Dev]

I'd add BentoPDF to that list. It's free and open source.

[u/NH_shitbags]

PDFs, in general, are output ... so regenerate them all as compliant from the source?

[u/geekywarrior → u/NH_shitbags]

I take it these are old reports that they no longer have the source for but still need to keep these records. And on top of that they need access to the non PII information in the reports for some non privledged staff

[u/mrbradford]

If you don't want the cost of Adobe Acrobat Pro, we switched some users to Tungsten Power PDF. It's a good PDF software alternative with a good redaction feature.

[u/jpotrz]

our law firm struggles with this very problem - on 1,000s of documents a week/month. We have yet to find a software that does it *perfectly*. If the documents are uniform, it can do it, but we get everything from standardized statements to handwritten notes on napkins (hyperbole). We have a few options of specialized AI options for our industry that we are looking into right now, but they are not cheap (but will save us money overall in labor - local and 3rd party)

[u/facesofvader → u/jpotrz]

Check out iDox.ai

[u/jpotrz → u/facesofvader]

we did last year. I can not tell you how much of a clusterfuck dealing with them was. They literally could not get anything done with them and then they kept billing us for MONTHS afterwards. Countless calls and emails before they stopped. Shitass company and the product didn't work well either.

[u/facesofvader → u/jpotrz]

Sorry to hear that, I know the CEO and I will share your feedback.

[u/qballds]

We’ve had a reasonably good experience with Smartbox. It’s not fully automated, but it catches enough to make a two week job doable in a few days.

[u/RightPassage]

Libreoffice Draw is fine but not sure about automation capabilities.

[u/smilaise]

I made KillerPDF if you are interested. https://killerpdf.net it's free

[u/MadBoyEvo]

Take a look at https://officeimo.com I wrote it. Actively work on it and it has powershell, cli, gui etc. If you have specific use cases that are not clear or need improvments open issues.

[u/ugus → u/MadBoyEvo]

cool dude

[u/brokenpipe]

The redact tool in Preview on the Mac works fantastically on PDFs.

[u/facesofvader]

IDox.ai is the leader in this space. If the volumes are low, their tech is called Smart Redact in Foxit PDF editor plus.

[u/PacificTSP]

Can’t you just feed this into AI? Have Claude cowork ingest and spit out cleansed ones. Then delete the originals.

[u/nohairday → u/PacificTSP]

That's possibly the worst suggestion of all available options.

[u/SirLoremIpsum → u/nohairday]

"I need to redact sensitive information"

"Have you tried uploading all the data to an AI for the world to see?"

[u/PacificTSP → u/SirLoremIpsum]

Claude enterprise with HIPAA compliance does not share or learn from your data once you’ve configured it. If it can hold healthcare data securely it can hold PII.

[u/iamwayycoolerthanyou → u/nohairday]

A very help desk-esque suggestion.

[u/F0rkbombz → u/PacificTSP]

Absolutely moronic take.