Auto-Redact Personal Info from a PDF
Automatically find emails, phone numbers, card numbers, and ID-style numbers, review every match by category, then redact them for real — all inside your browser.
Drop a PDF here to scan for personal info
How automatic PII redaction works
Auto Redact PDF scans the text of every page in your PDF against a set of pattern-matching rules — looking for the shapes of email addresses, phone numbers, credit or debit card numbers, and long numeric ID patterns such as Aadhaar-style 12-digit numbers or SSN-style formats. There's no AI involved and nothing is sent to a server; the entire scan runs using your browser's own text-extraction engine, so the file with the sensitive data in it never leaves your device.
Every match is grouped by category — emails, phone numbers, card-like numbers, and so on — so you can bulk-select or skip an entire category at once, or go through matches individually with a checkbox next to each one. Categories built on wider digit patterns, like phone or card numbers, are marked for extra review since a long invoice or order number can occasionally look like one; tighter patterns like email addresses are marked high confidence. You can also tap directly on a highlighted match in the page preview to select or deselect it, and zoom in on smaller print before deciding. Nothing changes until you confirm — once you do, the selected matches are redacted using the same real content-removal technique as the manual Redact PDF tool: the page is flattened into a plain image with those areas painted over, so the underlying text is genuinely gone rather than just covered.
Common use cases
- Scrubbing personal contact details before sharing a document publicly
- Stripping emails, phone numbers, and ID numbers before pasting a PDF into an AI chatbot
- Preparing a redacted copy of a form or application for a records request
- Removing test or sample personal data from documentation before publishing
- Clearing customer or employee contact details from invoices and HR paperwork before archiving
- A fast first pass before a more thorough manual review with Redact PDF
Because everything happens locally, scanning and redacting work the same way on a phone or tablet as on a desktop — there's no file size limit tied to an upload, and no login required.
Related tools
Auto Redact PDF — frequently asked questions
The tool reads the text layer of every page and checks it against a set of pattern rules for emails, phone numbers, card-like numbers, and ID-style numbers. Every match is grouped by category and shown to you with a checkbox — nothing is redacted until you confirm. Once you do, the selected areas are permanently removed using the same real content-removal technique as the manual Redact PDF tool.
Email addresses, common Indian and international phone number formats, 13–16 digit card-like numbers, 12-digit ID patterns such as Aadhaar, and SSN-style numbers in the XXX-XX-XXXX format. Each category is grouped separately in the review panel so you can select or skip an entire category at once.
No — pattern matching needs a real, selectable text layer to search, so scanned pages and image-only PDFs won't produce any matches. Run OCR PDF on the file first to add a searchable text layer, then come back and scan it here.
Yes to both, since this is regex-based pattern matching rather than AI. Phone, card, and 12-digit ID patterns are the ones most likely to catch a false positive, like a long invoice or order number, which is why those categories are marked "Review carefully" in the results — check them a bit more closely before confirming. Email and SSN-style patterns are tighter and rarely misfire.
Use the manual Redact PDF tool afterward and draw a box over anything this automatic scan didn't catch. It uses the exact same permanent removal method, so you can layer a manual pass on top of the automatic one for a more thorough result.
It's permanent. Any page with at least one confirmed match is flattened into a plain image with the redacted areas painted in — there's no text layer left underneath to copy, search, or recover. Pages with nothing selected are left completely untouched.
Not directly — the tool checks for a password up front and tells you to use Unlock PDF first. Once the password is removed, bring the file back here to scan and redact it.
Yes, that's one of the more common reasons people use this tool now — running a PDF through here first to strip emails, phone numbers, and ID numbers before sharing it with an AI assistant or a third party. Since everything runs locally in your browser, the original file with the personal data in it never leaves your device either.