How to secure a PDF???

sleep2much

As Michael Winner would say "calm down dear"
The original starter said "prevent PDF's that I create being edited or tampered with" so that is where the editing came in, you said:

isofa wrote: »

You cannot create an editable PDF out of any screen capture,

so that's where I came in, you can, although maybe not to publishing standards.
The referance to illegality:

isofa wrote: »

Presumably, people spouting this, never buy anything legal, because obviously it is all available illegally? So you don't buy CDs because they are easy to copy, you don't buy DVDs etc. However no doubt you are just the sort of people, who wouldn't go and actually steal something from a shop... Thought not...

To say that people who disagree with your point of view are all software thieves was a bit below the belt?
I used "OFF TOPIC" in my analogy, which means, erm, off topic, as was your analogy that we are all thieves, you don't need to be a thief to play with pdf's, your business may be on the ball whenever the thought of copyright is mentioned, it's just that so much stuff is so easy to copy today that we forget it took real time and effort to produce, we used to buy a record from the shop and take it home to play, we had something physical, now you can download hours of music in a few minutes, to a thing the size of a key ring, we have more respect for the key ring sized player than the hours of music, it's a funny old world, I wonder why there was a record button on old radio cassettes? We never dared use it.....did we?

sco0ter

converse wrote: »

I do agree with isofa on this one too.

Not to all users, look how many here ask the simpliest of questions without googling first.

And all it would take is a post on any numerous boards to get the answer

converse wrote: »

I disagree here too, it's exactly the same, with google you are giving someone the tools, just as someone who breaks into a car will have the tools.
Replacing the locks with Sellotape allows everyone - with or without knowledge to break in - and that's a different scenario..

Missing the point totally...

You are not GIVING the tools to anyone they have access or know someone who has access. The tools (Google) are far more widely available than car breaking tools. The selotape comment is the same thing. Why would anyone serious about security use it the same as adobe PDF security.

converse wrote: »

There was a long on going law suite with Adobe and one of the crackers ElcomSoft, I doubt Adobe have ever conceeded it's legal to break their security, but I may be wrong!.

The same as letting the AA or RAC break into your car... I doubt they would have to contact the car manufacturers to circumvent thier security measures... I think thats down to the OWNER of the vehicle. So what you are saying is documents protected with adobe security then become property of Adobe and you are no longer allowed to recover them in event of a lost password

converse wrote: »

Regardless, if someone secures the document and makes it their copyright, stating is can't be repurposed, copied, edited, then, again, I'm with isofa - of course you are doing something illegal breaking the seal so to speak and doing what is non-permitted by the creator, just because you can crack it and do it doesn't make it legal. Just like copying CDs, DVDs in the other example is the same. It may go on, and many people may do it, but that's a different distinction between whether it is legal or not.

As you mention google, I assume then you didn't find all the third party tools which secure PDFs to a higher degree than the basic (and weak) Acrobat security? Surely that would have been better advice to the OP too?

LockLizard being a popular one http://www.locklizard.com/pdf_security.htm but a google for 'PDF security' will bring up what you are looking for.

Your right on that one... Never learned to use google...


Still dont see where this is going... I didnt say it was right. I didnt say just because it can be cracked made it legal.

And as for LOCKLIZARD .. $2495 for a yearly DRM license to make sure its secure might be a bit more than the OP wants to pay. again telling someone to purchase software at thet price is bad advice..

http://www.locklizard.com/purchase_digital_rights_management.htm

converse wrote: »

I don't think that was the intention, nor do I think it was bad advice. The OP was told how to secure them, which is what he asked. Because the secuity isn't theat strong, doesn't make the advice bad. That's in Adobes court.

The OP asked for advice. PDF is NOT secure.. To say that it is good advice when it isnt is just plain ignorance. If something is that important it needs to be protected

DO IT RIGHT

converse wrote: »

The screen-shot PDF is useless for a print workflow, you can screen-shot anything, so I don't see the point here, you'll end up with a poor version, so it's hardly a copy even to rival a camcorder cinema copy of a film
:beer:

????????????????
Not even in my post

isofa

LOL, it's only a commercial...

I never suggested anyone who disagreed with my point of view was a software thief! :rolleyes:

However users that condone, recommend and use cracking technologies, that's a different.

I just found it odd that everyone who disagreed (and plenty agreed too!), thought that just because you can break a security system, then it's ok to do this and everyone should / can. That's a pretty unfortunate point of view don't you think, maybe a reflection on society today? Hence the car locking analogy. There are very few security systems which can't be broken into, high-bit security today, will be easily broken by computers of tomorrow.

Taking a screen shot and converting via Photoshop will not result in a textually editable PDF, it will just be an image, which you can only edit with bitmap tools. Hence my "You cannot created an editable PDF", you are creating an editable low-res graphic, which is not a PDF. To any users comfortable with PDFs, an editable PDF is not an image, it's a textually and design editable file based on underlying postscript technologies.
You could OCR it to get the text out, but it's a very cumbersome procedure, and won't retain any of the design features.

I agree that the general public does forget what effort goes into producing some items, and because coping is easy, some people do it, that'll never make it right though - and that's always been my point. :cool:

sco0ter

Aiadi wrote: »

Many thanks to all those who contributed:T. The reason I was asking is that I do send important letters and documents that are usually signed in my name to work in PDF format and was looking for something that would make it less than straight forward for Joe public to edit or alter these docs. I do realise that nothing is 100% secure but I guess that I'll have to give the professional Acrobat software a look.

The idea of documents that can only be viewed for a certain time is also compelling if it exists ( a bit of a James Bondy doc with self-destruction component).

On a related note, is there a way to tag these files securely with some unique identifiers that would change if the file is altered in any way?

Have a look here for a few ideas

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/acrobat/solutions/detail/protect_info.html

Look under the SHOW ME header for the "Use digital signatures to verify that a document is authentic and has not been modified"

Hope this helps..

BTW there is a free version to try so you can download and have a go yourself to see if it suits

sco0ter

isofa wrote: »

I just found it odd that everyone who disagreed (and plenty agreed too!), thought that just because you can break a security system, then it's ok to do this and everyone should / can.

could you show me where you saw this on this thread????

sleep2much

Not all PDF's are the nice ones we see advertising cars and stuff on their sites, many are just copied documents like the ones I found in my very quick search, and my quick 3 examples, you can convert the screen captured picture to any format you fancy, your not stuck with a bmp tools.
anyway I call it a draw.

isofa

But it's still an image, not an editable textual and vector PDF

sleep2much

isofa wrote: »

But it's still an image, not an editable textual and vector PDF

Yes, correct, but you can edit any image and put it into a pdf.;)

isofa

That is true, have we done this to death now?!

djbd1973

sco0ter wrote: »

Have a look here for a few ideas

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/acrobat/solutions/detail/protect_info.html

Look under the SHOW ME header for the "Use digital signatures to verify that a document is authentic and has not been modified"

Hope this helps..

BTW there is a free version to try so you can download and have a go yourself to see if it suits

I was going to suggest digital signatures.

If you are sending a PDF to a whole bunch of people, you can also restrict certain users to a level of commenting, and signing on a document through their signature, and if I remember correctly, a signature can be matched through Windows XP and Macs for a users ID.