Redact a PDF. Remove the text for real.

The black rectangle problem.

The best-known redaction failures all have the same shape. Someone draws a black rectangle over a name in a PDF, or highlights it in black in a word processor, and publishes the file. The rectangle is a drawing instruction layered above the text; the text is still underneath it, and anyone can select it, copy it out or extract it with a script. Court filings, government reports and corporate disclosures have all leaked this way.

A real redaction removes the content. This tool applies a PDF redaction annotation to the region you selected, and applying it deletes the underlying text and image data from the exported document, while deliberately preserving the images and vector artwork elsewhere on the page. What is gone is gone: the exported file no longer contains the words, so no amount of copying, extracting or re-rendering brings them back.

For a long document, doing that by eye is where mistakes happen. Search for a name or a number, review the matches, confirm once, and every occurrence is queued for redaction. Each stays visible as a pending edit until you export, so the last check is yours.