How to send a copy of your ID card safely

Banks, landlords, employers, mobile carriers and online services often ask for a copy of your ID card. Once you’ve sent it, you lose control of where it goes. A clear, unmarked copy of an ID can be reused for things you never agreed to.

You can’t make a copy completely misuse-proof, but a few simple steps make it much less useful to anyone other than the person you sent it to. This guide walks through them, using free tools that run in your browser so the photo of your ID is never uploaded.

Before you send anything

Take a moment to check the request itself:

• Is the request genuine? If someone contacts you out of the blue asking for ID, verify them through an official phone number or website you find yourself, not one in the message.
• Is a copy really needed? Sometimes showing the ID in person, or confirming a few details, is enough.
• What exactly do they need? Ask whether they need both sides, and whether they need every number. A rental agent checking your name may not need your card number; a bank doing a legal identity check usually does.
• How will you send it? Prefer the organization’s secure upload portal over email or chat apps.

Step 1: Take clean photos of both sides

• Lay the card flat on a dark, plain surface.
• Use daylight or even light, and tilt the card slightly if you see glare on the laminate.
• Keep all four corners in the frame.
• Make sure the text is sharp when you zoom in.

Phone photos are fine. The tools below accept JPG, PNG and iPhone HEIC files.

Step 2: Hide what they don’t need

Open the Hide ID number tool. Draw a box over each part you want to cover: an ID number, a barcode, your address, a signature, or even your photo if it’s not needed. Then choose how to hide it:

• Black box (default) covers the area with solid black. This is the safest option: the original pixels are replaced and can’t be recovered from the saved image.
• Strong blur and Pixelate look softer, but light blurring can sometimes be partly reversed, so use a black box for anything sensitive.

The result is saved as a new image (JPG, or PNG if you started with a PNG).

Only hide information the recipient doesn’t need. If a bank must verify your ID number, covering it will just get your application sent back. Some ID schemes have their own masked format for this purpose. In India, for example, UIDAI offers a “masked Aadhaar” that shows only the last four digits of the Aadhaar number. Check what the organization accepts.

Step 3: Add a watermark

A watermark that says who the copy is for, and when, makes it much harder to pass off as a fresh copy somewhere else. Open Watermark ID copy and add your photo.

• Watermark text: say who it’s for and why, for example “For ABC Bank account opening only”.
• Add today’s date: on by default. The date is added after your text.
• Layout: repeated across the whole picture (default), or one line across the middle.
• Opacity: from 10% to 80%; the default is 35%.
• Colour: gray (default), red or blue.

Aim for a watermark that crosses the important parts of the card but still lets the recipient read the details. If they can’t read your name or number through it, lower the opacity a little. A tiled watermark is harder to crop out than a single line.

Step 4: Put front and back on one page

Many organizations want both sides of the card on one page, at real size, as if you’d photocopied it. Open ID card front & back on one page:

1. Add two photos: the front first, then the back.
2. Optionally, drag the corner points onto each card’s corners. The tool straightens tilted photos and trims the background.
3. Choose your settings:
   • Save as: PDF (A4) or JPG (A4).
   • Card size on the page: real size (85.6 × 54 mm, the standard bank-card size) or large (twice real size).
   • Write “Front” and “Back”: off by default.
4. Click Make page and download the result.

This works for any ID that’s the size of a bank card, such as many national ID cards and driving licenses. Passport photo pages are larger, so for those use the document scanner instead.

Putting it in the right order

You can combine the steps in a couple of ways. A simple order that works well:

1. Hide numbers on each side’s photo with Hide ID number.
2. Watermark each side with Watermark ID copy.
3. Combine both watermarked photos with front & back on one page.

If you’d rather watermark the finished page, combine first and then:

• for a JPG page, use Watermark ID copy;
• for a PDF page, use Watermark PDF, which offers a large diagonal stamp, a tiled pattern or a small line at the bottom. It doesn’t add the date automatically, so type it into the text.

Step 5: Protect the file (optional)

If you have to send the copy by email, consider adding a password. Protect PDF encrypts a PDF with AES-256, so it can’t be opened without the password.

Share the password through a different channel from the file. For example, email the PDF and text the password, or read it out on a call. Sending both in the same email defeats the purpose.

If you forget the password, the file can’t be recovered, so keep your own unprotected copy somewhere safe.

After you’ve sent it

• Delete the copies from your downloads folder, chat threads and shared drives once you no longer need them.
• Keep a note of who you sent your ID to and when. The date in the watermark helps here too.
• If you think a copy has been misused, contact the organization that issued the ID and follow its official guidance, which varies by country.

Why do this in the browser?

Uploading a photo of your ID to a random website to edit it is itself a risk. All the tools in this guide run on your own device: the images are processed in your browser, and nothing is uploaded to Treeet. They work on phones too, so you can take the photos, prepare the copy and send it without moving files around.

A watermark and a few black boxes won’t stop a determined fraudster, but they make your copy far less valuable to anyone who shouldn’t have it.