What a PDF reveals about you

A PDF is more than its pages. It usually carries a note of who made it, with what and when, and sometimes much more. Most of it is invisible until someone looks in the file’s properties.

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What is stored besides the pages

Open any PDF’s properties (File, then Properties or Document info in most readers) and you will often find:

  • Author: often the name of the account on the computer that made the file, which may be your full name or your employer’s.
  • Creator and producer: the app and version that wrote the file, such as a word processor or a scanner.
  • Created and modified dates, to the second, with the time zone.
  • Title, subject and keywords, sometimes left over from an earlier document used as a template.

What sits deeper in the file

Some details don’t show in the properties window at all:

  • A second copy of the document details in a format called XMP, which survives if only the visible fields are cleared.
  • The author and time of every comment and highlight.
  • Details inside photos placed on the pages: the camera or phone model, the date, and the GPS location where the photo was taken.
  • Dates on attached files, and leftovers of the app that made the file.

When to clean a file

Before sending a document outside your home or company where the name of the author, the software or the timing shouldn’t travel with it: a tender, a job application written on a work laptop, an anonymous submission, a photo of your home in a classified ad.

Remove metadata shows what a file holds and saves a copy without it, in your browser, without uploading the file. Uploading a document to a server in order to remove private details from it would trade one exposure for another.

What cleaning does not do

Metadata is what the file says about itself, not what is written on the pages. A name in a letterhead, a signature or a footer is content: cleaning leaves it alone. To hide visible content for good it has to be redacted, which removes the text under the black box and not just covers it.

Comments stay too, without their author and date. If the notes themselves shouldn’t be editable or removable, flatten the file so they become part of the page, or delete them before sharing.

Tools for this

Files are processed on this device and never uploaded.

Questions

How do I see a PDF’s metadata?
In most PDF readers, open File and then Properties or Document info. Remove metadata on this site also lists what it finds before you remove anything.
Does “Print to PDF” remove metadata?
It replaces some of it: the new file gets the printing app as its creator and a new date, often with your account name as author. It also turns form fields and links into plain page content.
Can photos in a PDF reveal my location?
Yes, if the photo was placed in the PDF with its original data. A phone photo can carry GPS coordinates. The photo option in Remove metadata takes these out.

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