Do you delete information from a PDF on your iPhone? Then pay attention to this!

There is an annoying problem when editing a PDF on your iPhone. Information that you have deleted can still be read afterwards.

Edit PDFs on iPhone: Here’s what you should pay attention to

Do you ever use PDF files on your iPhone? And do you ever edit them to remove important information before forwarding it? Then you have to be careful. If someone opens the edited PDF in a photo editing program (e.g. Pixelmator Pro), they can sometimes view the entire PDF, including the deleted data.

A book publisher on Twitter discovered the problem when he used the feature to take a full-page screenshot of a website. When you do that, your iPhone creates a PDF of the image. You can then crop the part you want to use. For example, you can delete the personal information and then forward the PDF via WhatsApp, for example.

How I reproduced the issue:
– Screenshot any page in any app that scrolls, such as Safari, Notes, Files, Word, etc.
– Select “Full Page”
– Crop to show only what you want to share.
– Save as PDF.
– Send it to your Mac or PC.
– Open any photo editor (such as Pixelmator or Affinity…

— Eric, book publisher 📚 (@eric5310pub) April 30, 2023

When you open the cropped PDF in WhatsApp, nothing is wrong yet. But when he loaded the PDF into a photo editing program, the full PDF was visible. So also the data he had previously deleted.

What should you do then?

It is better never to forward PDF files containing sensitive information, even if you have already removed it. It is smarter to simply take a screenshot of the part you do want to show.

Also make sure that you do not cross out the data with the markers of the built-in editor on your iPhone. You can often adjust the brightness of the image afterwards and still see what you have crossed out.

Issue is known to Apple

The problem of the PDF files is known to Apple, but no solution is available yet. It’s not really an Apple issue either. This is more due to the way PDF files (also on your iPhone) work. When cropping a PDF, the data remains in the file.

But fair is fair: Apple could show a warning. Or at least provide a way to automatically convert the cropped PDF to an image.

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