How to Protect Your Identity by Watermarking Important Documents

Eventually, you’ll have to share copies of documents like your Passport, driver’s license, and bank statements. This is an unavoidable part of the process for many rent, banking, and travel-related applications. Watermarking will help stop these images being fraudulently used if they leak online.

You Need to Vigilantly Protect Your Private Info

Data breaches are common place: you cannot rely on the security of the online services you use to protect your important personal data. Unfortunately, this includes the organizations that you have to share scans of your identity and financial documents with.

Watermarking (that’s overlaying text over an image) can help here. Adding a watermark to the scans of your documents can stop them from being used by someone else if they are stolen.

How to Watermark an Image in Windows

You can use good old, reliable, Microsoft Paint to watermark images in Windows. Just scan your image as a JPG or PNG file, open it with Paint, and use the text tool (circled in the screenshot above) to add a text watermark.

How to Watermark an Image on MacOS

The Preview app in macOS is a surprisingly powerful editing tool. To add text to an image (or PDF), click on the markup button in the top right of the window (it’s the pen icon) and then use the text box tool.

How to Watermark an Image on iPhone/iPad

Like macOS, the preview tool in iOS and iPadOS lets you annotate images and documents. Tap the markup button in the top right of the screen and then the + icon at the bottom of the screen (next to the pens) and then tap “Add Text”.

How to WaterMark an Image on Android

Android lacks a stock image editing app (though your device may have shipped with one provided by the manufacturer).

If you don’t have a preferred image editor already installed on your Android Phone, Adobe Photoshop Express is a solid choice. Once you’ve installed it (and dismissed the subscription pop-up), open your image, scroll sideways along the list of tools at the bottom of the screen until you find the Text tool, and add your watermark.

Other Tips for Sharing Important Documents

When adding your watermark, include information to uniquely identify when and where you uploaded your document. By including the name of the organization you are supplying the image to, as well as the current date, you can discourage others from trying to use the image for a different purpose at a later date.

Providing low-resolution images also makes them less useful if they happen to be stolen. You should also make sure that the watermark text covers your photo or other important details of the image, so it can’t simply be edited out.

Some places may not accept ‘altered images’ and demand that you supply unaltered copies. If supplying unaltered images can’t be avoided, you can still take measures to protect your identity online.