Your PAN is printed on far more than your PAN card: Form 16, salary slips, bank statements, ITR acknowledgements. Find every one in the PDF and hide it — or keep just XXXXXX234F so the other side can still tell it's yours.
Form 16, salary slip, statement, e-PAN · PDF, JPG or PNG
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| Document | Commonly sent to | Do they need your full PAN? |
|---|---|---|
| Salary slip | Landlord, broker, visa application | Usually not — keep the last 4 |
| Form 16 | Bank or NBFC for a loan | Often yes; ask before hiding it |
| Bank statement | Landlord, visa, loan | Usually not |
| ITR acknowledgement | Visa, loan, tender | Sometimes; it may be verified online |
| PAN card / e-PAN | Hotel, gym, society, employer | An employer does; most others don't |
A PAN together with your name and date of birth — often on the same page — is enough to attempt loans, credit cards and buy-now-pay-later accounts in your name. Fraudulent loans taken on someone else's PAN are a well-reported problem, and the victim usually finds out only when the credit score drops. Hiding the PAN on documents that don't need it shrinks that risk with no downside.
Worried your PAN has already been misused? See how to check if someone has taken a loan on your PAN.
A PAN always has the same shape: five letters, four digits, one letter (for example ABCDE1234F). On a PDF with real text — downloaded salary slips, Form 16, statements, e-PAN — the tool finds every string with that shape on every page and masks it. TAN numbers have a different shape and are left alone. On a scanned PDF or a photo there's no text to search, so you draw the masks yourself.
The saved file is rebuilt as an image, so the hidden characters are gone rather than covered by a box you could lift off. The trade-off: text in the saved PDF can't be selected or searched.
For Aadhaar, use Mask Aadhaar. To stamp the purpose on any ID copy, use Watermark ID Copy. For emails, phone numbers and card numbers in other documents, see Redact PDF.