I think some banks utilize some feature built in PDF Readers to PREVENT printing of “SENSITIVE” information in a PDF, by blocking parts with black bars.
The issue does not appear when printing using other software, like Adobe Reader or Microsoft Edge, to print the PDF. But it DOES occur with Firefox and Chrome. So it’s not a driver issue.
Is this a form of DRM? I want to know how it works whatever is causing it, and be able to REMOVE it from the PDF itself completely.
Why does Firefox obey this “DRM” crap, while Edge has the balls to ignore it?
And to make things even more complicated, I am able to print the PDF fine on another computer, using the exact same OS, browser, and printer. So it appears to be a specific setting or version of .e.g Firefox?
If only I had NAME for this, then I’d be able to search for it online.
The word you’re looking for is redact. That’s where they put black bars over parts of documents to hide sensitive information.
https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/resources/how-to-redact-a-pdf.html
Someone suggested screenshoting the document and seems like the quickest solution to me too.
hmm it’s weird that using ‘their own’ software (printing with Adobe) does NOT cause the black bars to appear. Using other software (Firefox/Chrome) does make them appear when printing.
However, I’m not sure if this is what has caused it. The article you linked doesn’t seem to be about printing specifically.
Ahh, interesting. I’ve never had the issue so can’t verify, but I assumed it was the culprit as you mention PDFs.
Someone else mentioned CSS and I have looked into, but never used the rules. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_media_queries/Printing
You wish to use different styles to enhance the appearance of your content on paper.
It’ll be interesting to find out what the cause actually is! 🧑💻
Probably CSS. You can set printer CSS. You would have to find a way to disable it. Screenshot might be easier.
CSS the programming language? what does “set printer CSS” mean
Sorry, was a rushed answer.
You can set CSS style sheets for different display types (desktop, mobile, etc) and one of those display types is a printer.
https://reintech.io/blog/css-print-stylesheets-tutorial
As for bypassing, you could try using the browser inspection tools to delete the printer stylesheet?
Its a pretty poor DRM, and that a different browser didn’t replicate it suggests it might not be the cause.
Sounds like something u could get chagpt to write some js code to fix.
I could hardly get gpt4 to even recognize the problem. If you know a good prompt, I will try it. I’m on Linux.
Heres my conversation with 3.5: https://sharegpt.com/c/sPvVOPj
And with gpt4: https://shareg.pt/D71gN5w
Ignore the system prompt at the start just my gpt config i use.
What I don’t understand is that you say that opening the same document in Adobe Reader works fine? Why would Adobe ignore its own format instruction?
It sounds more like a bug than a deliberate DRM thing.
yeah but a bug how exactly? Is the bug the black bars themselves (visible in Firefox/Chrome)? Or is the bug that they are not appearing (in Adobe/Edge)?
The black bars do seem very much deliberate. They look kinda similar on this forum
Well, that’s the question. It may be a bug in Adobe, but that’s QUITE the bug, if some sensitive information is supposed to be hidden, but isn’t!
The fact that the sensitive information is still in the document, but behind black bars is what makes me suspicious.
The PDF spec / standard is large and vast, and every PDF reader has a different interpretation of it.
Try converting it into formats with less weird stuff like PostScript and back to PDF.
that sounds like an interesting idea. Perhaps there is a simple linux terminal command for that
yes of course. it’s pdf2ps and there are multiple ps2pdf* . They are part of Ghostscript. However, there’s a chance it gets blackened during the first conversion as well. so i wish you the best of luck
thanks I’ll try to convert to ps and back. A normal pdf survived the interdimensional travel. Now with the weird pdf, when I can get my hands on it again.
God that’s so dumb when you can probably already just select Rich text with images from a screenshot now on modern OS. They’re just trying to blow people’s printer cartridges :/
In a secure setting this can be useful. It limits peoples ability to accidentally send secure documents to a network printer that may print to somewhere insecure.
It’s just like a padlock. It helps keep honest people out, but doesn’t stop everyone.
Yea or a locked down no phone workplace with screenshots disabled ig
Why does Firefox obey this “DRM” crap, while Edge has the balls to ignore it?
Well, I don’t know, if it is the case here, but often times when you see stuff like that, the reason is that Firefox uses an own browser engine. Edge is just Chrome under the hood. Webpage owners won’t block the quasi-monopoly Chrome.
Meanwhile, Firefox is actively dependent on webpage owners to test/fix their webpages to also work with Firefox, and to not depend on proprietary ‘standards’ only implemented by Chrome.
Firefox does also very much want to pander to users, to attract more of them, so you’ll often see them straddling the line, like nono, Firefox does not come with an ad blocker, dear webpage owner, just a tracking blocker which accidentally happens to block 99% of ads, and the uBlock Origin extension is more effective than in other browsers, but nono, Firefox does not come with an ad blocker.
But it DOES occur with Firefox and Chrome.
Your whole comment is built on a mistaken premise.
It’s not. Edge can choose to behave differently than Chrome in individual points like this, so long as they still behave like Chrome for 99.9% of the web standards, webpage owners won’t really be able to block them without blocking Chrome, nor need to put in extra effort to support Edge.
(They could block Edge based on user-agent string, but Microsoft could change the user-agent string.)
Like, yeah, if it’s essential for a given webpage that this half-assed redaction feature works, then they might actually block access from Edge. But most webpage owners won’t notice that it doesn’t work, and even if individual webpages block Edge, Microsoft will hardly care.
