Redact a bank statement

A landlord wants proof you can pay the rent. A lender wants three months of statements. Neither of them needs your account number, your card number, or a line-by-line record of where you were every Saturday night.

Open the tool Free, in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

Before redaction. — A statement page before and after, with the account number and the transaction lines covered.

A statement page before and after, with the account number and the transaction lines covered.

This is the worst file to upload

A bank statement is an account number, a sort code, a full name and address, and a complete record of somebody’s movements and habits. Handing that to a free online redaction site – which is a server you have never heard of, in a country you did not choose – is a worse exposure than the one you were trying to prevent.

Nothing here is uploaded. There is no server, the browser is forbidden from sending the file anywhere, and you can watch that in the network panel or confirm it by pulling the cable out.

What to take out

Type the account number and the sort code once and they go from the header of every page. The detectors cover the address, the phone number and any email address. The bank’s own logo stays, because it is the thing that makes the statement credible.

For the transactions, draw. A box over a line, or a run of lines, or a whole column – what is left is the dates, the balance and the salary credits, which is what was actually asked for.

Give them the least that answers the question

Before covering anything, decide what is actually being asked. "Can this person pay the rent" needs the salary credits, the closing balance and the dates. It does not need the account number, and it does not need eleven weeks of shopping.

A lender asking for three months of statements usually does need the transactions, because they are assessing outgoings – in which case cover the account number and the address and leave the rest, rather than sending a document so thoroughly redacted that they ask for the original.

If you are not sure, ask them what they need before you start. It is a better use of five minutes than redacting twice, and a statement that comes back rejected is one you have to send again – usually less carefully.

And it has to still look like a statement

The point of the document is that somebody believes it. Each page is rebuilt with the bars drawn into the pixels, so the layout, the bank’s branding and the running balance are exactly as they were – it reads as a statement with things covered, not as a document that has been through a machine.

And what is covered is gone. Whoever receives it cannot select the bar and read your account number out of the file, which is what happens with a black rectangle drawn in a PDF editor.

How to do it, in four steps

Open the statement. It is read in the tab; nothing is sent anywhere.
Type the account number and sort code, and tick the detectors for address and phone number.
Draw over the transaction lines you are not being asked to prove.
Check the balance and the dates are still legible, then Redact and export.

Who it is for

Anybody asked for a statement by a landlord, a lender, an accountant or a court – and small firms sending statements to a bookkeeper or as part of a grant application.

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Questions

Is my statement uploaded?

No. There is no server. Everything happens in this tab, on your machine, and the browser is not permitted to send the file anywhere at all.

Can the recipient recover what I covered?

No. The page is rebuilt from pixels rather than covered with a rectangle, so the account number under a bar is not in the file to recover.

Will it still look like a genuine statement?

Yes. The layout and the bank’s branding are untouched; only what you marked is gone.

Can I redact one transaction and keep the rest?

Yes. Draw a box over any line, or any part of the page, by hand. Every mark is visible before anything is covered and can be removed with a click.

Also

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