How to redact a passport copy: photo page and MRZ

Someone asks for a copy of your passport, and they need your name and perhaps your date of birth, not everything else. To redact a passport copy properly, you need to know one thing about the photo page. The two lines of letters and chevrons at the bottom repeat your data. Cover a field in the printed data but not there, and it is still on the copy. Here is how to do it, step by step.

Send the photo page only

The other pages, with visas, stamps and your travel history, rarely matter to the person asking. Send the photo page and nothing else, unless they ask for more. If you photographed or scanned a two-page spread, use the snip tool to export just the photo page.

First, ask what they need. The answer decides everything below.

The machine-readable zone repeats your data

The machine-readable zone (MRZ) is the block of two lines at the bottom of the photo page. It is defined in the international standard for travel documents, ICAO Doc 9303 (Part 4, for passports). The first line holds the document type, the issuing country and your name. The second line holds the passport number, your nationality, date of birth, sex and the expiry date, plus an optional personal number. Part 3 sets the common rules, including the check digits that follow the number and the dates.

So every field you cover in the printed data is probably also in the MRZ. Cover it in both places, or cover the whole MRZ.

What to cover on a redacted passport copy

Start from what the receiver asked for and cover the rest. Fields people usually cover are the passport number, any personal number, place of birth, the signature and, if nobody needs to compare it with your face, the photo. Then cover the same values in the MRZ.

This is guidance, not a statute. For the German ID card, the data protection authority of North Rhine-Westphalia says the name, address and, where relevant, the validity are generally what identification needs, and that the other data may and should be blacked out (LDI NRW, in German). The field-by-field guide for ID cards is in what to redact on an ID card copy.

Some checks need a full copy: banks and other businesses with anti-money-laundering duties must keep a full copy. A redacted passport fails their check. See when a full ID copy is required. In the browser, the Dress Docs ID-copy preset shows which fields to cover and warns you when a check needs the full copy.

Mark it as a copy

Add a watermark that says who the copy is for, why and when, so a forwarded copy shows where it came from. What to write is in how to watermark an ID copy.

Export and check

Export to PDF, PNG or JPG. Each page becomes one flat image, so nothing under a cover survives, and the metadata is removed. ID copies are always temporary in Dress Docs: close the tab and the document is gone.

On a computer, open Dress Docs in your browser. With just a photo on your phone, the free app works too: get Dress Docs.