PII Blackout: Offline PII Redaction for PDF, Word and Excel

On This Page

Company and ownership
Where PII Blackout fits
How PII Blackout processes documents
Comparison with RedactifyAI
Technical specifications
Deployment, security and pricing
Evidence
Resources
Company Information

PII Blackout is a desktop program for Windows that finds personal data in PDF, Word and Excel files and permanently blacks it out on the user's own PC. It targets solo lawyers, small firms, accountants and small businesses. It is run by one individual developer, not by a company.

How this profile came about: Shuai Shao requested the listing through the contribute form on 3 November 2026. IDP Software wrote the profile from PII Blackout's website and public listings. Figures marked as vendor claims have not been verified independently. About the author: Shuai Shao.

Company and ownership

The website says the product is "operated by SHAO SHUAI (individual developer)". The privacy page names the same person as the responsible party. The site gives no legal form, street address, registration number or country, so none is stated here. The terms say United States law and the law of the state where the operator is located apply, without naming the state. A post on DEV Community from May 2026 by Shuai Shao describes two months of building and the release of version 1.0.2, so the product is new. AlternativeTo names a developer called "FlyAllRisk"; the website does not explain this name. Contact is support@piiblackout.com. The same developer also offers a video tool, Video Blackout, which is not covered here.

Where PII Blackout fits

PII Blackout is a single-user redaction tool, not a document processing platform. It covers one step: find personal data, let a person check it, remove it. It fits a person who must send redacted copies of bank statements, CVs, HR files or court exhibits and does not want to upload them to a web service. It has no integrations and no API, and it is licensed per device. A team that needs a case-management connection, shared review or a hosted service should read the RedactifyAI profile next to this one. A platform that also handles video and audio is VIDIZMO Redactor.

How PII Blackout processes documents

The user opens a file or a folder and runs Step 1, "Analyze & Preview". Detection runs in two stages. First, regex and pattern rules scan every page. Then the GLiNER PII language model refines the result and removes false positives. The pipeline is built on Microsoft Presidio. The user can also enter custom keywords. The site lists 61 entity types in its overview and says "70+" in the headline and FAQ; the list includes names, addresses, IBAN, US SSN, UK NINO, Indian Aadhaar, NHS and Medicare numbers, passwords, API keys, QR codes and barcodes.

Every match is highlighted in the PDF. The user keeps or removes matches and can draw extra boxes. Nothing changes until Step 2, "Apply Redaction". Then each page is rendered as an image (400 DPI by default) and the chosen areas are filled with black pixels. The text is gone from the image and not covered by a removable box. Because the output pages are images, a searchable text layer comes only with the "OCR-enabled exports" of the Professional and Team plans. Every job also writes a TXT report that lists, page by page, the terms removed by entity type. The OCR guide says OCR is used to find text on scanned pages; the product does not name its OCR engine.

For metadata the FAQ says only that PII Blackout "supports workflows to help remove metadata". The metadata guide recommends a separate sanitize step with Acrobat "or equivalent". Ask the vendor what the app itself removes.

Comparison with RedactifyAI

Both profiles use the same rows so that the two tools can be read side by side. PII Blackout is a local desktop tool for single users. RedactifyAI is a cloud service for law firms with a Clio connection. For the technique behind both, see the redaction capability and the document redaction guide.

Point	PII Blackout	RedactifyAI
Deployment, offline or cloud	Desktop app, files processed on the PC; internet needed to sign in and verify the licence; free browser demo runs in the cloud	Cloud service in the browser; AWS us-east-1; processing in the US only; nothing to install
Platforms	Windows 10/11 64-bit (installer, Microsoft Store); macOS shown on the homepage, "Developing" on the download page	Browser; no operating system named; Clio Manage connection
File types	PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx); images count toward plan limits	PDF, Word (.docx, .doc), images (TIFF, PNG, JPG); no Excel
Scanned images and OCR	OCR for image-based PDFs in the desktop app; engine not named	Built-in OCR for scanned PDFs and images; Amazon Textract named in the privacy policy
Detection method	Regex and pattern rules, then the GLiNER model, on Microsoft Presidio; custom keywords; 61 or "70+" entity types	Amazon Comprehend for personal data, then a review by a model on Amazon Bedrock; QR codes and barcodes; no entity count on the site
True text removal	Pages rendered as images with black pixels; text erased from the image	"Permanently removes data from the file"; method not described
Metadata	Not clearly claimed; "supports workflows to help remove metadata"	"Metadata and hidden content cleaned"; no detail
Human review	Highlights reviewed in Step 1; nothing applied until the user confirms	Side-by-side review with manual override; every redaction confirmed; audit trail and versions
Integrations	None published	Clio Manage (Starter plan and up); sign-in with Google or Clio; no API published
Pricing (USD per month)	Free; Starter 29; Professional 69; Team 149; Day Pass 9.90, Week Pass 34.90	Free; Starter 19; Pro 66; Business 250; Enterprise on request; 20% off when billed yearly
Trial	Free tier: 3 PDFs per day, 15 pages each; browser demo	Free plan with 50 pages per month; 30-day Pro trial; 30-day money-back guarantee

Technical specifications

Feature	Specification
Document Types	Bank statements, CVs, HR records, legal exhibits, tax documents, medical records; any PDF, Word or Excel file
Input Formats	PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx); images counted as one page each
Output Formats	Redacted PDF (page images), TXT redaction report
Processing Pipeline	Analyze and preview, review, apply redaction, report
API/Integration	None published
Deployment Options	Windows desktop app (installer about 1.5 GB, Microsoft Store); free browser demo
Certifications	None named
Claimed Accuracy	None published; the terms say no software can guarantee 100% detection

Deployment, security and pricing

The installer is a large download. The homepage says about 1.2 GB; the file on the vendor's download server was 1.47 GB when checked on 9 November 2026. The download page asks for 4 GB RAM; the developer post says 12 GB is the sweet spot. The app needs an internet connection to sign in and to check the subscription when it starts. The vendor says documents are not uploaded and that models run from a local folder. The privacy page lists processors only for the website and demo: Cloudflare, Creem, Google and Modal. The browser demo uploads files to storage and to Modal for processing.

The vendor names no security audit or certificate. The homepage badge "GDPR & HIPAA Compliant Ready" is not a certification, and the terms disclaim liability for compliance failures. Language support is English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch. The entity list leans towards US, UK, Indian, Australian and Singaporean identifiers.

The pricing page lists, in USD per month: Free (3 PDFs per day, 15 pages per document), Starter 29 (1 device, single documents, 100 pages per month), Professional 69 (2 devices, no page limit, batch folders, OCR-enabled exports), Team 149 (5 devices, central device management, priority support). One-time passes cost 9.90 for 24 hours and 34.90 for 7 days. Yearly prices are shown after switching the billing toggle.

Evidence

All results are PII Blackout's own claims. The homepage says "100% Offline" and "Zero Telemetry", but sign-in is required, the privacy page mentions usage analytics for the website, and a third-party chat widget loads on the site; these concern the website, not the app, and the vendor does not say what the desktop app sends. "No data leaves your RAM" and the line "mathematically impossible to recover" (developer post) are strong statements without a test method. The entity count differs between pages (61 and 70+). The default output resolution is 400 DPI on the homepage, while the FAQ calls 300 a good default. No customer, case study or benchmark is named; the site says its use cases are not customer testimonials. A test is easy: redact a sample file, then try select-all, copy and a text search on the result, and inspect the document properties.