PDFRedactor

PDFRedactor is a Python tool for redacting sensitive information from PDF files. The script can detect and redact phone numbers, email addresses, links, IBANs, BICs, timestamps, dates, and custom text patterns from PDF documents.

Features

• Phone Numbers: Redacts phone numbers.
• Email Addresses: Redacts email addresses.
• Links: Redacts links/urls/hyperlinks.
• IBANs: Redacts detected International Bank Account Numbers.
• BICs: Redacts detected Bank Identifier Codes.
• Timestamps: Redacts detected timestamps.
• Dates: Redacts detected dates in various formats.
• Custom Text Patterns: Redact any custom text pattern specified by the user.

Installation

To install PDFRedactor, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/ltillmann/pdf-redactor.git

2. Cd into the cloned directory

3. Install the required dependencies using pip:

   pip3 install -r requirements.txt

4. Make the script executable or pass the script directly to python:

   chmod +x pdf_redactor.py

Quick start

You can run the executable script from the command line:

./pdf_redactor.py [-h] -i INPUT [-e] [-l] [-p] [-v] [-m MASK] [-t TEXT] 
                  [-c {white,black,red,green,blue}] [-d] [-f] [-s] [-b]

Below are the available options:

Options

• -h, --help: Show help message and exit.
• -i INPUT, --input INPUT: Filename or directory path to be processed.
• -e, --email: Redact all email addresses.
• -l, --link: Redact all links.
• -p, --phonenumber: Redact all phone numbers.
• -v, --preview: Preview redacted areas before continuing.
• -m MASK, --mask MASK: Custom word mask to redact, e.g. "John Doe" (case insensitive).
• -t TEXT, --text TEXT: Text to show in redacted areas. Default: None.
• -c {white,black,red,green,blue}, --color {white,black,red,green,blue}: Fill Color of redacted areas. Default: "black".
• -d, --date: Redact all dates (dd./-mm./-yyyy).
• -f, --timestamp: Redact all timestamps.
• -s, --iban: Redact all IBANs (International Bank Account Numbers).
• -b, --bic: Redact all BICs (Bank Identifier Codes).

Examples

1. Redact phone numbers from a single PDF file:

   ./pdf_redactor.py -i input_file.pdf -p

2. To redact email addresses and preview redacted areas:

   ./pdf_redactor.py -i input_file.pdf -e -v

3. Redact a custom text pattern and specify redaction text for a directory of PDF files:

   ./pdf_redactor.py -i directory_path -m "CONFIDENTIAL" -t "[REDACTED]"

Preview Redactions

When using the -v or --preview option, the script will display a preview of each redacted area on each page and prompt you to continue with the redaction or abort.

Limitations

• Most detection features rely on regular expressions, which may not cover all possible formats or variations.
• PDFRedactor CANNOT (yet) redact vector graphics, images, XObjects, metadata, names, adressess, SSNs, tables, labels etc.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Acknowledgments

• This tool utilizes the PyMuPDF library for OCR and PDF processing PyMuPDF.
• To detect phone numbers, I used David Drysdales Python port of Google's libphonenumber python-phonenumbers

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to open a pull request or report issues.