Strip the hidden data out of a filing

A PDF carries more than its pages: author names, editing history, scripts, attachments and layers that are switched off rather than absent. This finds them across the whole file and takes them out.

• Scans every byte of the file, not just the first part of it.
• Rescans the result, so every line on the panel is a measurement.
• Two methods: keep the text searchable, or rebuild the pages as images.

A partial scan is how a file gets called clean

The usual shortcut is to search the first chunk of the file for markers and report on what turns up. On a small document that works. On a forty megabyte scan with an attachment near the end, or a metadata packet written after the page tree, it finds nothing and prints the word "clean", which is the most damaging output this kind of tool can produce.

Everything here is measured over the whole byte range, and then the finished file is scanned again by the same code. What the panel says afterwards is a fact about the document you are about to send, rather than a claim about what was attempted.

This is not redaction, and it does not pretend to be

Sanitising removes what is attached to the document. It does not remove what is printed on the page. A name in a paragraph is still a name in a paragraph afterwards, and the tool says so on the screen where somebody might otherwise assume the opposite.

Two ways to do it. Stripping keeps the text layer, so the document stays searchable and selectable and behaves normally for whoever has to work with it. Rebuilding redraws every page as an image, which is more thorough and makes the document worse to use, so it is offered as a choice rather than applied quietly.

The panel lists what was found before you choose, with a severity against each item, and lists what remains afterwards. A document with an embedded script and a document with a stale author field are different problems, and a single word like "clean" or "unsafe" is not enough to decide between them.

Does it remove the author name?

Yes, along with the rest of the document metadata, and the rescan confirms it is gone.

Will the file still be searchable?

With the stripping method, yes. The rebuild method turns the pages into images, so it will not be.

Support and billing: support@gosmartpdf.com. Operated by Mrityunjay Kumar, India. Payments by Dodo Payments, our merchant of record.

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