PDF file format is very popular for distributing documents online because they can be accessed, viewed and printed on any operating system or device. There are hundreds of PDF viewing applications available for all the platforms. But when it comes to securing your PDF files, the standard PDF editors offer only a few restrictions such as blocking the ability to print or to select the text.
If you want a very high level of PDF file protection, then you have to use CopySafe PDF Protector. This one application is enough to provide you with many different protections often desired from a PDF file. All the PDF files protected using CopySafe PDF Protector can be viewed only with the CopySafe PDF Reader. Both of these are freely available.
CopySafe PDF Protector offers access control protection. We can password protect the document, add an expiry date to the document and also hide the original document title. It also offers content copy protection. We can prevent PDF printing or allow secure printing. Similarly, we can prevent screen capture of the document, prevent it from being opened from inside a virtual machine (like VirtualBox or VMware) etc.
We tested by using all of these protections and produced an ENC file which is accessible only through CopySafe PDF Reader. When we tried to open this file under VMware, it failed to load because of the protection. When we tried to take a screenshot using HyperSnap 8, the screenshot program was quietly closed.
All-in-all, CopySafe PDF Protector is a very good PDF protection software. It is a great application to be used by the people who intend to distribute their PDF documents publicly over the internet but also with certain restrictions such as printing, taking screenshots or opening under a virtual machine.
You can download CopySafe PDF Protector and CopySafe PDF Reader from https://artistscope.com/copysafe_pdf_protection.asp.