A black rectangle is not automatically a redaction
Covering text with a normal shape can make information look hidden while leaving the underlying PDF text or image data intact. A recipient may still be able to select, copy, search or extract the supposedly hidden content.
Permanent redaction needs to remove the sensitive information from the shared output rather than merely place another object over it.
Mark every area that must disappear
Open the PDF in the Redact tool and draw redaction boxes over names, account numbers, addresses, signatures, images or other visible information that the recipient should not receive.
Review every page before applying the redactions. Headers, footers and repeated identifiers can appear more than once in a document.
Burn the redaction into the output
1into1 rebuilds the redacted page output with the selected blackouts burned into it. This avoids the common mistake of leaving a removable overlay above recoverable content.
The trade-off is intentional: rasterized redacted pages can lose selectable text and interactive PDF features. Keep the original document separately.
Verify the downloaded PDF
Reopen the finished file rather than trusting only the editor preview. Try selecting or searching for a portion of the information you removed and inspect the page visually at useful zoom levels.
1into1 also performs a final blackout verification step before the normal redacted download becomes available, but you should still inspect the finished copy before sharing sensitive material.
Redaction and sanitization solve different problems
Redaction is for visible content you intentionally remove. Sanitization is for hidden document data such as metadata, attachments, scripts, forms, annotations and hidden text layers.
If the document contains both visible secrets and hidden document traces, redact the visible information first and use Deep Sanitize as a separate final step.