Scan a PDF for hidden data and privacy risks

Scan a PDF for hidden metadata — author name, creation software, edit dates — before you send it anywhere. Nothing here is visible on the page itself, but it travels with the file. The scan and the cleanup both run in your browser.

Privacy Risk Scanner

reads Info dict + XMP · rebuild strips it

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How to Privacy Risk Scanner

Add your PDF. Drag the file onto the drop zone. It's scanned immediately.
Review what's found. Every populated metadata field is listed plainly — title, author, creation software, dates.
Strip it. Click to download a copy with all of that metadata removed.
Download. Save the cleaned copy. The visible content is unchanged.

What hides in a PDF that isn't on the page

Every PDF carries an Info dictionary alongside its visible content: a Title, an Author, the software that created and last modified it, and creation and modification dates. Anyone can see these by checking the file's properties in a PDF reader — no special tools needed.

The Author field in particular is a common accidental leak. Documents created from a shared template, or exported by office software using an account's registered name, frequently carry a real employee or personal name in a file that was meant to look anonymous — a redacted report, a template shared externally, a form submitted anonymously that quietly names its actual author.

Many PDFs also carry a second, more detailed layer called XMP metadata, an XML-based format capable of storing far more than the basic Info dictionary — sometimes including editing history or software-specific details. This tool reports how many such entries exist, if any.

How stripping actually works

Removing metadata here isn't a matter of blanking out a few fields. Every entry in the document's Info dictionary is deleted, and the XMP metadata stream is removed from the file outright rather than merely unlinked — an unlinked stream would still sit in the bytes for anyone with a text editor. Nothing new is stamped in its place, and the pages, bookmarks and form fields are left as they were.

Frequently asked questions

What exactly does this check?

The PDF's Info dictionary (title, author, creation and modification software and dates, keywords) and, separately, whether XMP metadata is present. It doesn't scan the visible page content — that's what the page itself shows you.

Is my file uploaded to check this?

No. The scan and the cleanup both happen entirely in your browser.

Will stripping metadata change how my PDF looks?

No. Only the invisible metadata is removed — the visible pages, text and images are copied across exactly as they were.

The scan found nothing. Does that mean my PDF is safe to share?

It means this specific category — document metadata — is clean. It doesn't check for other things that can leak information, like tracking links or content visible in a low-opacity layer; treat it as one useful check, not a complete audit.

Why does my PDF have someone else's name in the Author field?

PDF software often fills this field automatically from the account or template that created the document, which can be a colleague, a previous version's author, or a shared organizational account rather than you personally. Stripping it removes whatever is there.

Can I remove just one field instead of everything?

Not currently — stripping removes the metadata entirely rather than editing individual fields. For most sharing situations, a completely clean file is the safer default anyway.

Related reading

Longer guides covering the part this tool does not.

Merging PDFs without a watermark, and why the watermark exists at allThe stamp on a free merge is not a technical side effect. It is a bill, and it only exists because someone is paying for a server.Can redacted text be recovered from a PDF?Whether a redaction holds depends entirely on whether the text was removed or merely covered, and from the outside the two look identical.Has this PDF been edited since it was made?A PDF often keeps evidence of its own history. Reading that evidence is easy; knowing what it does and does not prove is the hard part.How to remove comments and annotations from a PDF properlyClosing the comments pane hides the review. Deleting the comments is a different job, and it has more parts than most people expect.What is a PDF, really?Everyone uses the format. Almost nobody is told what it actually stores — which is why so much PDF software behaves in ways that seem arbitrary.How to send a document securelyMost advice here is either hand-waving or enterprise procurement. Here is what genuinely changes the risk, in the order worth doing it.You forgot the password to a PDF. Now what?There are two kinds of locked PDF and only one of them is a real lock. Which one you have decides whether this is a nuisance or a dead end.Is it safe to use free online PDF tools?"We delete your files after an hour" is a policy someone chose to follow. Whether a tool needs that policy at all is an architecture someone chose to build — and only one of those two things you can actually verify.