How to redact a pay stub before you send it
Landlords, mortgage brokers, car dealers, and courts routinely ask for pay stubs to verify income. What they need is proof of what you earn — not your Social Security number, not your bank account, and not a line-item map of your deductions. Here's what to black out before that PDF leaves your hands.
What to redact (and what to keep)
- Redact: your SSN. Many payroll systems still print it, in full or last-four, near the employee block. Nobody verifying income needs it.
- Redact: bank account digits in the direct-deposit section — even "last 4" narrows down account takeover attempts.
- Redact: employee ID / clock numbers. Useless to the recipient, useful to someone impersonating you with your employer's HR.
- Consider redacting: garnishment and deduction lines. Wage garnishments reveal debts and child-support orders; medical-plan deductions reveal health coverage choices. A landlord needs your income, not your obligations.
- Keep: your name, employer name, pay period dates, gross pay, net pay, and year-to-date totals if the recipient asked for them. An over-redacted stub looks doctored and gets bounced back.
Why a black rectangle in a PDF editor isn't enough
Most PDF apps "redact" by layering an annotation over the text. The text is still in the file — select-all and copy pulls your SSN right through the box. Uploading the stub to a random free PDF site is worse: you're handing your income details to an unknown server. Redaction has to destroy the content, and it has to happen on your own device.
Redact your pay stub in three steps
- Drop the stub on redactoronline.com. It opens in your browser and is never uploaded — the whole tool works with your internet disconnected.
- Mark the sensitive fields. "Auto-detect PII" finds SSNs and account-like numbers in one click; left-drag across any deduction line and the box snaps to the row. If your stub is a scan or photo-PDF, hit "Scan (OCR)" first.
- Click "Redact & download". Marked areas are destroyed at the pixel level and metadata is stripped — the numbers no longer exist in the file.
Asked for two or three months of stubs? Drop them all at once — batch mode auto-detects across every file and hands back a zip.
Common questions
Will a landlord accept a redacted pay stub? Almost always. Income verification is about the pay figures — redacting your SSN and bank details is standard privacy practice, and you can say exactly that when you send it.
Should I redact the year-to-date columns? If they asked to verify steady income, keep YTD gross — it strengthens your case. Redact YTD deduction detail if you don't want your benefits choices visible.
My stub is a photo or scan. Use "Scan (OCR)" — recognition runs on your device, then search and auto-detect work like on a digital stub. The scan never leaves your browser.