Redact PDF

No. UnboundPDF processes PDFs locally in the browser — documents are not uploaded to a server. We have no backend that receives, stores, or scans your files.

Removed by default — the matched text is deleted from the page's content and the page is rewritten. UnboundPDF then re-reads the saved file to confirm the words are gone in plain, hex and two-byte encodings, and tells you plainly if a page could not be fully verified rather than claiming false certainty.

Only pages that can't be handled structurally — for example a page whose text can't be safely rewritten in place. Those pages are rebuilt as an image with the redaction burned in, and the result note names them.

No, when the page was handled structurally: the text is deleted, not covered, so there is nothing to select or copy. On a page that had to be rasterized instead, there is also no text layer left to copy — the page is an image.

No. Only pages containing a match you apply are touched; every other page is copied through unchanged.

Only if you tick Sanitize before applying. It clears document metadata, XMP data, embedded files, scripts, annotations and bookmark titles in the same pass — without it, redacting the visible text on a page does not touch the document's Author field or other properties.

It means the re-read after redaction could not confirm every page is clean — most often a page that had to be rasterized, or a match split across separate text-drawing operators that the tool reports rather than splices blindly. The note names the page so you can check it yourself.

Find patterns can suggest the tax ID (Steuer-ID), the social or pension insurance number (Sozialversicherungsnummer), the ID card document number (Personalausweis) and German IBANs, with or without the spaces they are usually printed with. For each one the check digit is calculated, and a number whose check digit does not match is not suggested; an ID card number printed without its check digit is suggested only when a label such as Ausweisnummer stands right before it. German phone numbers are matched by shape only, so other numbers can turn up. Every match is a suggestion you confirm page by page before anything is removed. A matching check digit means the number is well-formed, not that it belongs to anyone — and the tool does not tell you what you are required to redact.

Redact PDF has a Bank statement mode for this. It lists each line of the statement with its date, text, amount and direction, and nothing is ticked for you: you choose the outgoing payments whose booking text should be blacked out. Only that text is removed from the file. The date and amount of every line stay readable, and incoming payments cannot be ticked, which follows the published guidance on statements for the Jobcenter (the federal data protection commissioner's FAQ and Federal Social Court decision B 14 AS 45/07 R). The text can only be removed where the bank stored it separately from the date and amount; a line where they are stored together is marked as one that cannot be separated, not guessed at. After saving, the file is read again to check that every kept date and amount is still there and the removed text is gone. The tool gives no legal advice and cannot tell you what your Jobcenter will accept.