Don't pixelate text (or blur or swirl) text to hide it

[Jason]

Pixelation isn't a good way of hiding underlying text. The video and article on this website show how the author created a tool to un-pixelate text. He also suggests that blurring or swirling aren't any better (although doesn't go into why). The video is just over 4 minutes long. Watch it at 1.25 speed and it's still watchable and quicker.

https://bishopfox.com/blog/unredacter-tool-never-pixelation

Using black bars is the only surefire way of obfuscating it, assuming you actually lay a bar over it and don't just change the background and foreground colours in a word processor document which is useless.

It's an interesting foray into why pixelation is such a bad idea as well as how the tool works.

I need to try this sometime when I see someone pixelate someone's name on a screencap of a Facebook post. I'll let you know if I do.

[ssfc72]

Good info to know, about using pixelation on a text document. Thanks Jason.

In my photo of my car, I used a Cut tool, to remove the licence plate info. This results in a black bar being used to replace that area of the photo, so I would think that information would not be recoverable.

[Jason]

Yeah, black bars should be fine.