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Re: [OT] PDF text protection for OS X

To: REALbasic NUG <realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Re: [OT] PDF text protection for OS X
From: "Eric O'Connell" <eoc at mac dot com>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:09:19 -0800
Delivered-to: realbasic-nug at lists dot realsoftware dot com
References: <69CD2472-55DE-41FC-853B-E0BF91702DD7 at mac dot com> <438CFC53 dot 8050705 at ryandary dot com> <CA30E296-5CB7-4810-A8BC-E9C7AE9376B7 at webguide dot com dot au> <438D0613 dot 1030708 at ryandary dot com>
This piqued my curiosity- So I created a "locked" PDF from InDesign, with a password required to copy, edit, select etc text and changes.

Opening it up in Preview, the security settings are respected. You can select text with the text tool, but can't copy to the clipboard without the password- same with images. The print dialog box has "save to pdf.." grayed out as well.

Again, someone who really wanted to could probably crack it, but it seems to hold up under 'normal' use.

You might also have luck with PDFPenPro from smileonmymac.com, which while still pretty pricey, is less than the Adobe stuff.

-Eric

On Nov 29, 2005, at 5:53 PM, Ryan Dary wrote:

Doesn't the "host" app that is displaying the PDF have to "obey" these settings? What I mean is that if it is still unencrypted text, couldn't it easily be extracted? These security settings seem like ways to keep the "regular" people from getting at the data, but it seems like it wouldn't take too much work to get at it.

So if you take this document and print it to PDF, will the new PDF obey these settings? If not, then you just quickly converted it into an unsecured PDF.. perhaps I'm missing something.

- Ryan Dary

Kim Kohen wrote:
On 30/11/2005, at 12:11 PM, Ryan Dary wrote:
Well PDF was created by Adobe. You might consdier looking over their web site <http://www.adobe.com>. I have never heard of a "secured" or "locked" version of PDF, but I've never looked either.
••••
With the full version of Acrobat you can set the security settings to allow or prevent certain things like copy/paste, exporting, printing, opening etc. It's under Document Settings->Security.
cheers
kim

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