Is your redaction actually safe?
Many “redacted” PDFs still contain the text they were supposed to hide. Drop one in and we’ll try to read what’s under the black boxes, right in your browser. Your file never leaves your device.
No upload. No account. Open source.
How redactions fail
A black box looks final. But a PDF is data, not a photo of paper, and the “hidden” text is often still right there. Here’s what we look for.
MEMO: The acquisition will be funded by Meridian Capital Partners before the end of Q3.
The internal valuation came in at $412 million.
The text never went anywhere. The box is just a black rectangle drawn on top, and changing the colour behind it (or selecting and copying) reveals it instantly. unredact reads it straight from the file.
The black box that isn’t
The most common failure by far: someone draws a filled rectangle over the words, exports the PDF, and ships it. The rectangle is just decoration painted on top. The original characters are still in the file, fully selectable and searchable. Try the demo: the text was there the whole time.
Proper redaction removes the underlying content instead of covering it up.
The checks we run
Text still under the box
A black box was painted over the words, but the words were never deleted. They are still selectable, searchable, and copy-pasteable.
Box width leaks the length
Even when the text is gone, the width of the box reveals roughly how many characters were hidden, which narrows down what it said.
Removable redaction mark
The black box is a separate annotation sitting on top of the page. Anyone can drag it off, or delete it, and the content returns.
Hidden text layer under a scan
The page looks like a scanned image, but it carries an invisible searchable text layer underneath the mark.
This keeps happening, even to people who should know better
Botched redactions have exposed informants, deal terms, and personal data in high-profile documents. New tools, same mistake.
2019
A U.S. court filing
Lawyers “blacked out” passages, but the text could be copied straight out of the PDF, exposing sensitive details under the boxes.
2021
A government vaccine contract
Redacted figures and clauses were still readable through the document’s structure and annotations.
Over and over
Settlements, FOIA responses, filings
The same mistakes repeat: a rectangle drawn on top of text that was never actually removed.
Try it yourself
Pick a PDF and we’ll check it for failed redactions on the spot. Use any document you like.
Drop a PDF here, or click to choose one
We’ll scan it for failed redactions on the spot.
Nothing is uploaded. The analysis runs on your device.
A clean result means we didn’t find the failures we check for, not that a document is provably safe. For real matters, redact with tools built for it.
Your document never leaves your browser
This tool is public and anyone can use it, so we built it to never receive your file in the first place.
It runs in your browser
The PDF is read and analyzed entirely on your device using WebAssembly. There is no “upload” step and no server that sees your file.
Nothing is stored
No accounts, no databases, no logs of your content. Close the tab and it’s gone. The only thing you can share is a screenshot you choose to make.
You can verify it
Open your browser’s network tab while you scan a document. You won’t see it leave, and our security policy blocks the page from sending file data anywhere.
It’s open source
The full source code is on GitHub. You can read exactly what the analyzer does, run it yourself, or open an issue if we got something wrong.