PDF Security for Ebooks

It seems people want to know how best to protect their ebooks – if there is any protection available at all.

As James commented in Selling Ebooks: Affiliates At a Glance, PDF document seems to be the most common format for delivery. There is protection for PDF formats, but the security available for PDFs won’t stop people from passing your work around.

Still, some protection is better than none. PDF security options prevent readers from printing content, copying images and altering documents. Keep in mind that, generally, people can’t alter a PDF document unless they have Adobe Acrobat Pro. Adobe Reader only allows readers to… well, read.

In his article “Introduction To PDF Security“, Dan Shae discussed PDF security, which includes the following options:

• No Security: Anyone can print or alter the content. If they want to copy images and have access to Photoshop, all they have to do is import the document, crop the image, and save the image as a .jpg or .gif.
• Password Security: Anyone with access to the document’s password can print, alter, or copy images.
• Certificate Security: Users are assigned accepted certificates to authorize access to the document.
• Policy Server: This is a server-based security measure.

You can also set separate permissions apart from specific user permissions for a more customized PDF security. Apart from a feature to allow the visually impaired access to secured PDF documents, you can set the following specific permissions:

• Printing Allowed:
  • None: No printing allowed
  • Low resolution : Allows low resolution printing at 150 DPI.
  • High resolution: Enables full printing
• Changes Allowed:
  • None: Reader can’t make changes
  • Inserting, deleting and rotating pages: Self-explanatory.
  • Filling in form fields and signing existing signature fields: Readers can fill in form fields but can’t alter other aspects of the document.
  • Commenting, filling in form fields and signing existing signature fields: Same as above, only users can add comments to the document
  • Any except extracting pages: Allows anyone to make any changes except extracting pages
• Enable copying of text, images, and other content
  • Off: Protects against copy/pasting. Nothing in the document can be highlighted for copying with the text tool.
  • On: Allows text and images to be copied

Before I sat down to write this post, I did a quick search on PDF security. The very first link led to a program claiming to remove all security from PDF files.

Face it, people. For every one of us that takes great pains to protect our work from duplication and free circulation, twice as many hackers find a way around those security measures.

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