Updated on
A landlord, a scholarship office or a lender asks for a copy of a tax form. They need your income, not all nine digits of your Social Security number. So you open the PDF, draw a black rectangle over the number and send it. Unfortunately, that often doesn’t hide anything.
Why a black box in a regular PDF viewer isn’t enough
Most PDF viewers and editors add a drawn shape, a black highlight or a comment on top of the page. The text stays in the file, right underneath. Anyone who gets the file can select it and copy it, find it with Ctrl+F, or move the shape out of the way. On screen it looks redacted; in the file it isn’t.
What Redact PDF does instead
Every page with at least one black box is drawn again as an image, with the boxes in the pixels themselves, and that image replaces the original page. The text, pictures and form fields that were on that page are no longer in the file. Pages without a box keep their text as it was.
That has a price: on pages with a box, text can no longer be selected or searched, and the file can get bigger. So that no hidden copy of text stays behind, the tool also removes the document information and XMP metadata, bookmarks, attachments, document scripts and the tag structure from the whole file, plus the form fields and comments on pages with a box.
How to black out your Social Security number
- Open Redact PDF.
- Drop a PDF into the box or click to choose it. Redact works on one PDF at a time. A PDF with a password asks for it in the preview.
- Type the number under “Find a word or number and black it out” and click Find. Type it the way it’s printed. Spaces and capital letters don’t matter, but dashes do: if the form shows XXX-XX-1234, type it with the dashes. The tool tells you how many matches it covered.
- Draw a box over anything Find missed. Drag with your mouse or finger. On a scan there’s no text to search, so draw every box by hand. Undo removes the last box; to remove one particular box, click it and use Remove selected box.
- Step through every page with the arrows. A W-2 PDF often holds several copies of the form, each with the number.
- Click Redact PDF and download the copy. It ends in -redacted.pdf. Keep the original somewhere safe and share only the redacted copy.
- Check the result. Open the copy, press Ctrl+F and search for the last four digits. Nothing should be found on the pages you redacted.
Think of what’s around the number
Your Social Security number is rarely the only thing to hide. Look for an employee ID, account numbers, your date of birth or your home address, and cover them too if the recipient doesn’t need them. Text inside a picture, such as a stamp or a scanned signature block, can’t be found by Find: check it by eye.
Redacting happens in your browser, so your files aren’t uploaded to a server. You don’t have to take our word for it: Verify that no PDF is uploaded explains how to check it yourself.
Whether a redacted copy is accepted is up to the person or office that asked for it. This guide only covers the PDF work. For questions about what goes on your tax return, ask a tax professional or the IRS.
Frequently asked questions
Is the number under the black box really removed?
Yes. Every page with at least one box is drawn again as an image, with the black boxes in the pixels themselves, and that image replaces the original page. The text on that page is no longer in the file, so it can’t be copied or uncovered by removing the box.
Why can’t I select the text on some pages any more?
Pages with a black box are now images. That’s what makes the redaction real, but it also means the text on those pages can no longer be selected or searched. Pages without a box keep their text.
Will Find cover every copy of my number?
Find covers every match in the PDF’s text and tells you how many it found. It doesn’t find text inside scans or pictures, or the number written another way, for example without dashes. Always check every page yourself.
Is my PDF uploaded to redact it?
Redacting happens in your browser, so your file isn’t uploaded to a server. You can check it yourself in your browser’s network tab.