Under what SPECIFIC feature (in e.g. Firefox and Chrome) is this automatic obfuscation implemented when printing a PDF? And how to remove it from the file?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.