Guide
To remove personal data from a document, many tools ask you to upload it first. Before choosing, look at where the document goes and who can see it.
Updated
An online redaction service receives the whole document, with everything you want to remove from it. It is stored on a server for the time of the processing, sometimes longer; it may go through providers of hosting, storage or text recognition, in countries you do not choose.
For an organisation, sending personal data to such a service makes the provider a processor: the GDPR then requires a contract setting out its obligations, and transfers outside the European Union have their own rules. For an individual, it means trusting a website with a payslip or an identity document.
| Online tool | Offline software | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the document is processed | On the provider's servers | On your computer |
| What leaves your computer | The whole document | Nothing about the document |
| Network needed | Yes, for every document | No |
| What you have to trust | The provider, its subcontractors, their security | The software installed, which you can observe |
| Getting started | Nothing to install | An installation, and updates |
| Size and number of documents | Often limited by the upload | Limited by your computer |
Offline does not mean flawless. The software must be installed and kept up to date, it uses the power of your computer, and it can still make mistakes: a missed name or a badly read scan stays your responsibility to catch at review. And the document stays as safe as the computer it is on.
Import, OCR, detection, review, export and verification all run on your computer, with or without a network. The detection rules and OCR data are installed with the application; the optional detection model is downloaded only if you ask for it in Settings, and checked before use.
The application uses the network only for its license: activating it, and validating it at most once a day, with the license key and a fingerprint of the computer hashed so that the raw identifier never leaves it. No document, text, finding, file name or path is ever sent. Settings › Privacy lists what is contacted and why.
It may be true, but you cannot check it, and the document has been sent in any case: it went through the network and the provider's systems, and possibly its subcontractors'. Whether that is acceptable depends on the document and on your organisation's rules.
Yes, once the trial has started or a license is active. A license works offline for the 30 days of its lease, then 15 days of grace.
No. For a document with nothing confidential in it, convenience may win. For documents full of personal data, which are the ones you anonymise, keeping them on your computer removes a whole category of risk.
Summarising a contract, rewording a report, analysing a table: AI assistants are useful. What you paste into them leaves your computer.
Redacting a PDF means removing information from the file, not hiding it on screen. Here is the method, the traps, and how to check the result.
Drawing a black rectangle over a name hides it on screen, and nowhere else. The text stays in the file, one copy and paste away.
Download it for macOS, Windows or Linux: the trial needs no account and no card. A question, or a demonstration for your team? Write to us.
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