Security options when printing to PDF!
The print to PDF feature of Mac OS X is one that I use a lot. I think it is so much more lightweight and useful then using the Acrobat. It is improved a lot in Leopard. It now includes security options. When you go to "Print" and choose "Print as PDF", there is a new button "Security Options...". What it lets you add is password protection. You can choose a password to open the document, a password to copy text from the document or a password to print.
Sorry about the late tip. There is a storm where I live and my high-speed internet just went down. I am posting this on dial-up (I think I only realize how slow it is when I am stuck using it).
Sorry about the late tip. There is a storm where I live and my high-speed internet just went down. I am posting this on dial-up (I think I only realize how slow it is when I am stuck using it).
posted by Frederic Tremblay at
2/07/2008
6 Comments:
i'm curious about what carlos said, if the security isn't that secure, what is a better way to secure documents? how do you password protect zip files in mac?
How do you do to post a tip in this blog? How do you contact MacGeek?
My email is tips4mac (at) mac (dot) com
MacGeek
And answer to t's question, use PGP or gnuPG.
http://www.pgp.com/
http://macgpg.sourceforge.net/
As far as I know, what carlos said only applies to the copy and print protection, not to password protection for the whole pdf document. Here's why: protecting the entire document actually encrypts it. This encryption cannot be cracked or circumvented just like that. Maybe some super-hacker with some James Bond-like super-hacking-tools could do it, but you and I could not.
The copy or print password, however, does not encrypt the pdf but really just sets a password for accessing this specific feature. Now what carlos refers to is that some pdf tools (especially older ones) simply do not support this feature; and by not knowing how to handle this password request it is simply ignored.
So if Preview or Adobe Reader refuse to let you copy or print a pdf I recommend using something like PDFLab which will ignore this. Alternatively, if you have an old OSX 10.1 or 10.2 install disc you could extract an early version of Preview, which also cant handle these password requests.
It's a good share about security printing..
""ANY security printing "
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