Comments on: Urgent News Ebooks Authors with Unsecured PDF files – Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 has a new feature making it easy to steal text.

By: John S. Rhodes

John S. Rhodes — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:15:00 +0000

I was just about to write Part II of this article Want to Sell Your eBook... Fortunately, I found this blog posting so now I know what to include in Part II. This could be a very serious problem for people who make their living by selling information products on the internet. If I find any answers, I will definitely head back here and provide an update!

By: Angie Pedersen

Angie Pedersen — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 21:55:00 +0000

Thanks for the heads up Kristie, and for the research Lynette! Good tips to keep in mind when creating (and updating) information products. Now I need to go check my products to see where I stand.

By: Lynette

Lynette — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:37:41 +0000

I went back to do a check. Created one locked PDF where users can only print, but cannot edit, save a copy or add notes. And one unlocked PDF.

If you open the locked PDF, the ‘Save As Text’ option will be greyed out.

By: Lynette

Lynette — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:44:34 +0000

The save as text feature has been there since forever.

The trick is to create PDFs that cannot be edited (protected by password). I haven’t tested it in Version 8 yet but it used to be any PDF that’s created where it cannot be edited unless you use a password, it won’t ‘save as text’. It would act like it would but won’t.

To create PDFs that aren’t editable, you can use the free PDFCreator.

But you want to know the worst problem? There are tools you can get inexpensively to crack the password. Depending on how savvy your market is or how motivated they are, majority of people won’t bother.