Question: I made a PDF from a Microsoft Word document. So far so good. Now what is the best way to protect my PDF eBook to ensure I don't get thousands of unauthorized copies of my PDF eBook floating around the internet? I don't want to use a simple password to protect the PDF document, because judging by the amount of unauthorized PDF copies of other eBooks I have seen available on the internet, that security method is very weak.
Answer: According to your needs, you can try to encrypt PDF by 128-bit password. VeryPDF Encrypt PDF has such function which allows you to protect PDF eBooks absolutely safe. There are many versions of this software available: GUI version, command line version, COM version. Here I will take the command line version for examples. In this article, I will take the command line version for examples.
Step 1. Download Encrypt PDF Command Line
- When downloading finishes, there will be a zip file. You need to extract it to some folder then you can find the executable file in MS Dos Windows.
- Open help.txt then you can find all the parameters and examples in it.
Step 2. Protect PDF eBooks by setting password.
Know a little bit more about password encryption level.
The process of encryption can help you hide data or the contents of a message in such a way that the original information can be recovered through a corresponding decryption process. For now there are two levels available: 40-bit and 128-bit Encryption. Compared to 40-bit encryption, 128-bit encryption offers 88 additional bits of key length. This translates to 288 or a whopping
309,485,009,821,345,068,724,781,056
additional combinations required for a brute-force crack. Based improvements of 128-bit Encryption, security experts expect that 128-bit encryption is very hard to be cracked.
- When you use this software, please refer to the usage and examples in help documents.
- Here are some usage and parameters for your reference. EncryptPDF [options]
-u : user password.
-w : owner password.
-p : permission print.
-c : permission copy.
-m : permission modify.
-n : enable adding and changing text notes and AcroForm fields.
-e [128 or 40 ] : set encrypt level.
-k : set for all permission bits.
-v : view the PDF file after encrypt.
-l [log file name] : specify log file for output message. - When you need to encrypt PDF eBooks, please refer to the following command line templates.
EncryptPDF -i c:\sample.pdf -o c:\out.pdf -w owner -u user -l c:\out.log
By this command line, we can encrypt PDF file both open password and owner password and input log information.
EncryptPDF -i c:\sample.pdf -w owner -u user -e 128 –p
By this command line, we can encrypt PDF by 128 bit level password of both open password and owner password.
EncryptPDF -i c:\sample.pdf -w owner -u user -e 40 -k –828
Normally speaking, if you set both of open password and owner password by 128-bit level password, encrypted PDF file can not be opened or cracked easily. During the using, if you have any question, please contact us as soon as possible.