Remove security from a secured PDF file

Published 2017-03-07, 21:41

One of my banks stopped offering downloadable CSV files of the statements af account. Bastards.

Luckily they still offer the monthly statement as a PDF. Parse that (parsing PDFs always is a pain, but possible), you have a CSV.

…

Unfortunately the PDFs offered for download are Secured PDF files. And most PDF parsing libraries can’t or don’t want to handle secured files.

„Well, bank statements are sensitive information!“ you might say. Yes they are. So I would understand if they used a security setting that requires a password to open a file. But they don’t do that. The file is just secured so… I don’t know exactly. I can do everything but open them by my trusted library.

I could just open all the files and then print them again as PDF to have an unsecured PDF file. But as I have lots of statements, this doesn’t sound too fun.

Of course there are also many paid softwares to remove PDF passwords and security features. Most cost once to register, some even monthly. Meh.

But if you spend some more time googling, there are also FREE tools: