2 Simple and Easy Solutions to Protect Sensitive Information when You Publish Online

Privacy Online

Introduction

I have been recently preparing an article describing the extraction of invoice data from PDF invoices. This presents a challenge as images of the invoices are essential inclusions in the article that is being developed but they also contain sensitive information that should not be shared.

The Problem

The article requires images of invoices to be included but the invoices contained sensitive information that should not be shared on the Internet.

Need a method to obscure sensitive information in images.

The Solution

We will use Paint 3D, an image editor which is available on Windows 10 and 11 to demonstrate two techniques to obscure data in images.

Blur The Image

The first technique involves blurring the data to be hidden.

1. Open the image with Paint 3D and select the portion of the image to be blurred.

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2. Select the bottom right anchor with the mouse and drag up and to the left to shrink the image.

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3. Click anywhere

4. Select the previously shrunk image with the ‘select’ tool, and expand using the bottom right anchor.

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5. Click anywhere and save.

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Obscure with Dummy Data

The second method involves placing text over the sensitive information which needs to be hidden.

1. Open the image with Paint 3D

2. Select the Text tool

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3. Enter dummy text

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4. Check the Background fill checkbox

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5. Select a background colour

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6. Save the final image

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Conclusion

Two techniques have been presented which can be used to protect sensitive information which is contained in images.

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