PDF encrypted document Security

[micheleb5691311]

This is what happens when you save a pdf encrypted document with AI. If someone opens your computer, he can see the data you thought you hid ... See the screenshot

[Monika Gause]

Anyone who is able to use a Google search can open your "encrypted" PDFs in less than a minute. And that includes opening the browser for the search.

It's not an encryption.

[micheleb5691311]

Encrypted is a traslate error, sorry. Ok, then I should put this post in the Acrobat Forum

[ArmPauloFer]

Exactly. I do with Adobe Illustrator password-protected PDFs and send them by e-mail.
I was very hangry when i discover that with online sites for anyone can bypass-it with no effort and download a new unlocked PDF in less than a minute with a couple of cliks and then open it again on Illustrator and get all the art, vectors, pictures and so on inside them.
So our PDF files are truly unsecured. 😞

It's a shame!

[Bobby Henderson]

I think if you password protect and encrypt the PDF at the File>Open level rather than just at the Edit level the protection is harder to break. But doing that sort of defeats the purpose of sending a client a PDF to preview in the first place.

If I'm dealing with a client who I think will try to use my sign design sketches to get bids from rival shops I'll do things to trash the content of the PDF. Any vector content gets rasterized and even water-marked with a pattern; any rivals wanting to harvest art out of the PDF will have to re-build it -even all of the lettering in the design. Some of the dimension call-outs that normally would be included on the shop drawing are removed, as are some specs listings. It's a shame having to do these little things to sketch content in a PDF. So many people are just not bothered by committing acts of plagiarism and copyright infringement.

[Ton Frederiks]

What do you mean with PDF encrypted? A password to open or edit the document?

If I add such a password, I do not have a preview in that dialog.

[micheleb5691311 · Accepted solution]

Yes, encrypted is not the exact term, as I said before, was a translation error. This is a pdf protected with a password.

And I'm sorry, but that's right, if you save a pdf document by illustrator with a password protection, then the document will appear in Illustrator preview, and anyone can see it, so security does not work. It seems to me that you did not understand that my is an intervention to help developers to improve the software, so do not say "anyway can be opened a password protected pdf in less than a minute" because this is also a problem of Adobe

[Ton Frederiks]

You are right, sometimes Illustrator shows the content in a preview, but sometimes (the first time I tried it) not.

Here you see 2 files, test.pdf and test2.pdf. Both are pasword protected. One shows the generic page icon as preview (which I think is correct for password protected documents). The other one shows the content, while it is also protected with a password.

[Ton Frederiks]

You can report that here as a bug:

Illustrator Feature Request/Bug Report Form