iText Protect Against Edit

[Gregg Bolinger]

Does anyone know if there is a way using iText that I can protect a PDF so that a user can view and print but is unable to edit even using the full blown acrobat suite? I don't want to require a password just to open/print. But I also don't want anyone to be able to change the PDF in any way.

Thanks.

[Ulf Dittmer]

The way I understand it is that this should be possible if you set an owner password, but no user password, and the access permission as necessary. Then nobody but you can legally change the permissions, but they don't need a password for the actions that are allowed. (Software that violates the usage terms of PDF will be able to remove those permissions, though, but not Adobe products.)

The com.lowagie.tools.plugins.Encrypt class can do this after the PDF has been generated.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Thanks Ulf. I'll check it out.