Remove CPR numbers (Danish personal ID numbers) and personal data from a PDF right in your browser, with no upload to our server.
Remove content from PDF files for good, so it cannot be recovered by selecting and copying the text.
If you need to pass on an employment contract, a payslip, meeting minutes or other documents containing personal data, you often have to anonymise them first.
Select the content you want gone and delete it completely. You can also redact automatically with a word search, or use the automatic CPR number remover (CPR is the Danish personal identification number).
Drag your PDF here
The file opens straight away in the editor
When an employment contract, a medical certificate, a payslip or meeting minutes has to go to a counterparty, an authority or a trade union, the personal data rarely needs to go with it. Data minimisation is one of the six basic principles of the GDPR, and the Danish Data Protection Agency (Datatilsynet) puts it this way: processing “must be limited to what is necessary to fulfil the purpose” (our translation). Everything else — CPR numbers (Danish personal ID numbers), names of third parties, addresses, account numbers — has to be cleared out of the document before it is sent.
Anonymisation is not a stopgap in this context. Datatilsynet expressly treats it as equivalent to deletion under the storage limitation principle: “When it is no longer necessary to process the information, it must be anonymised or deleted” (our translation). Datatilsynet: The basic principles (in Danish)
That is what this page does. You mark what has to go yourself, or let the tool find CPR numbers, email addresses and specific text strings automatically across the whole document in one go. Free, with no account, and without the file ever leaving your computer.
Every page is redrawn as an image with the black boxes burned in. The hidden text beneath a box is not included in the file and can be neither selected, copied nor found by searching.
Danish CPR numbers (personal ID numbers) — with or without a hyphen — and email addresses are found automatically. Everything else — names, addresses, case numbers — you mark yourself or add as search terms. The search is not case-sensitive, and * stands for any text — type e.g. Employee: * to catch the rest of the line after the colon.
The finished file can be downloaded as a PDF or sent straight to the printer. There is no account, no upload and no waiting.
Most free redaction services ask you to send the document to their server first. They encrypt the connection and promise to delete the file afterwards, but the document has still left your hands — and the documents that most need anonymising are the ones you least want to send anywhere. If you send a medical certificate or a case file to an outside service to have the personal data removed, you have in effect disclosed it in order to get rid of it.
Here the whole process happens in your browser. The PDF is opened, marked and saved on your own machine; no file is sent and no copy is kept on a server. That also means there is no data processing agreement to sign — we process no data on your behalf.
If you draw a black box in an ordinary PDF program or in Word, the text is usually still underneath it. The recipient can select across the box, copy the content out or find it with a search — and that is the classic way confidential information leaks out in a case. The same applies if you simply remove a name from the visible text but leave it in the document’s metadata.
When you save here, every page is redrawn as an image with the marks burned in. The text beneath a black box no longer exists in the file. Always check the result by opening the finished PDF and trying to select what you removed — if you cannot, it is clean.
The file name and the document’s metadata are not carried into the edit — a file called Resignation_Smith_010285-1234.pdf gives the content away no matter how thoroughly the pages are anonymised. Rename the file before sending it, and check that the author name and title in the document properties do not come from the original.
Most people who need to remove a CPR number (Danish personal ID number) from a PDF reach for the program they already have. Here is what the other routes can do — and where they fall short.
No. The file is opened and processed in your browser, and the anonymised version is saved straight to your computer. Nothing is sent to a server and no copy is kept.
No. The pages are redrawn as images with the black boxes burned in, so the text beneath a box no longer exists in the file. It can be neither selected, copied nor found by searching. In return, it cannot be undone in the saved file — always keep the original.
The tool removes the information in a technically correct way, but the judgement of what has to be removed is yours. An automatic search finds patterns, not context: a person can easily be identified from job title, department and date alone, even when the name and CPR number are gone. Always review the document manually afterwards. Datatilsynet’s guidance on data protection in employment relationships (March 2023, in Danish) sets out what an employer may disclose and when.
Only manually. The automatic search reads the PDF’s text layer, and a scan is really an image with no text to search. You can still drag black boxes over whatever has to go, and the result is just as permanent. If the scan is to be anonymised automatically, it first has to go through text recognition — UniteDocs can do that.
Nothing. There is no account, no subscription, no limit on the number of files and no watermark on the result.
The tool opens a PDF in your browser and lets you place black boxes over whatever has to go — either by marking it yourself or by letting the tool search the whole document for CPR numbers (the Danish personal identification number), email addresses and your own search terms. When you save, every page is redrawn as an image with the boxes burned in, and the result is put together into a new PDF. The text beneath a box therefore does not exist in the new file. The original is left untouched.
The file is opened, processed and saved on your own computer. It is not sent to a server.
* in the middle of a term stands for any text: John*Smith matches both “John Smith” and “John Peter Smith”._safe_redacted.pdf.A 30-page case has to go to an external adviser. Run Auto-redact with CPR numbers and email addresses, then flick through the pages to check that the boxes cover the whole number.
Add surnames and addresses as search terms. Every occurrence in the document is marked at once. First names, initials and job titles (“the department head”) you have to judge yourself.
A scan has no text, so the search finds nothing. Drag the boxes with the redaction tool. The result is just as permanent as with a text PDF.
Open the saved PDF in your usual PDF reader and try to select and copy text where the boxes are. The saved file consists of images, so there is no text to copy.
As the data controller you must assess which information the recipient needs. The tool removes what you point at — it does not decide what should be removed. The CPR detection is specific to Danish personal ID numbers.
Health information in medical certificates and sickness-absence cases is a special category of personal data. Remove it before the document is shared with anyone who does not need it.
The saved file consists of images. It cannot be searched, text cannot be copied, and it is harder to read with a screen reader. Keep the original in the case file.
If you are sharing a payslip or contract with a colleague, a union representative or in a job application, you can remove the CPR number, account number and address first and leave the rest.
The file name travels with the saved file. If the original is named after you or contains your CPR number, rename it before you send it. Word files and photos that need to go along can be cleaned of author name and GPS position with Remove metadata.
A person can be recognised from job title, department and dates even when the name is gone. Read the document through as the recipient would before you send it.