PDF watermark

GT60

Hi i have word documents that i have watermarked for protection and then also saved the documents as PDF's to share out.
After i have shared the PDF's and word documents can people remove my watermark and pass the documents of as their own?
The PDF's are the free version 
Thanks 

Undervalued

Almost certainly if they put enough effort into it!

Try importing your PDF into an up to date version of Word (or Google Docs etc) and see what happens. I suspect you will get a 99% perfect import of the text in an editable form.

Long before the internet, in the early days of desktop PCs with floppy disk drives (remember them) an American judge commented that a computer was basically an unlocked filing cabinet with a built in photocopier!

The technologies may change but the concepts don't!

GT60

The document started of as a word document which i think is up to date with updates.
But saying that it is office pro  2010 
I suppose anyone could copy band paste if they were that desperate as some of the files are over pages.
It is a list of all the foodbanks in greater Manchester that I have produced and update every 6 months and some organisations are passing them off as their own.
I do all this in my spare time.

Undervalued

GT60 said:

The document started of as a word document which i think is up to date with updates.
But saying that it is office pro  2010 
I suppose anyone could copy band paste if they were that desperate as some of the files are over pages.
It is a list of all the foodbanks in greater Manchester that I have produced and update every 6 months and some organisations are passing them off as their own.
I do all this in my spare time.

It is frustrating but realistically there is little you can do.

Even if it was all locked up tight technically somebody could still just copy type all of your work and research which I imagine was the bigger part of your work?

That said, given the subject matter, is it not intended to be for the benefit of those that need the foodbanks rather than some one-upmanship between various organisations?

GT60

The lists are on social media including links for every one to have access and emailed to anyone who asks.
Its just annoying this one place seems to think it's ok to take water marks off.
I just don't get why go to all the trouble of doing that.
I will be pulling the organisation and asking why they have done that.

[Deleted User]

There is something that can make it a bit more difficult for to copy.

Convert your document to a bitmap format so it is essentially an image rather than individual text and graphical objects. You can then convert back to pdf if that is your preferred format for distributing it. When anybody tries to edit the pdf they will be presented with a bitmap image so won't be able to remove the watermark.

As per above comments it won't stop people using the content, if determined they could use OCR on your bitmap file or simply re-type the list anyway, say a list of 300 foodbanks would take a fast typist about an hour.

Downside if the pdf will no longer be searchable which I guess is a hinderance for people trying to find a local one out of say 300?

Probably would be better to maintain a searchable list on a website where somebody just pops a post code in and gets a map with the nearest anyway - like this one:

https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/food-banks/

eddddy

Not really a solution - but something that might annoy the person making the copies...

Assuming they are selecting all the text in the pdf document, then copy/pasting it - you could have a bit of fun by intermingling extra characters and words in your list in white font on white background. 

Depending on how they paste the text, the extra characters and words might show up when they paste them. If they notice, it will be extra work to edit out the words. If they don't notice, their list will include the extra words.

(For example, you could include 'Copyright GT60' a few times in the list in white font on a white background.)

GT60

[Deleted User] said:

There is something that can make it a bit more difficult for to copy.

Convert your document to a bitmap format so it is essentially an image rather than individual text and graphical objects. You can then convert back to pdf if that is your preferred format for distributing it. When anybody tries to edit the pdf they will be presented with a bitmap image so won't be able to remove the watermark.

As per above comments it won't stop people using the content, if determined they could use OCR on your bitmap file or simply re-type the list anyway, say a list of 300 foodbanks would take a fast typist about an hour.

Downside if the pdf will no longer be searchable which I guess is a hinderance for people trying to find a local one out of say 300?

Probably would be better to maintain a searchable list on a website where somebody just pops a post code in and gets a map with the nearest anyway - like this one:

https://www.gmmh.nhs.uk/food-banks/

I didn't think about the pdf search element.
I will leave as PDF formats so people can search for their areas.
Thanks

oh_really

Maybe obtain a more comprehensive vers of Adobe that will permit you more protections.

giraffe69

How about asking the people who are passing off your work as theirs to put an acknowledgement of this. I've had this work when an organisation were using a document which had taken some time to prepare with no attribution. They then did as asked.

jazzy

If there are images on the PDF document get these images watermarked before creating your PDF document.