Protecting a document from Being Copied - Copyrighting a Document

kala85

Can anybody give me some advice on how to protect a document from being copied or altered.

I am currently doing up a word document and I want to make it difficult for someone to copy it and pass it off as their own.

Paulw

To stop the document itself from being altered, you could have it converted to PDF. You can't directly edit a pdf document.

scamalert

http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/products/acrobat/pdfs/adobe-acrobat-xi-protect-pdf-file-with-permissions-tutorial-ue.pdf-to put password and disable printing privileges.

also if using password to prevent access totally,use password generator and save it to usb key or smth,as it takes couple seconds to break 4digit password.
Or can try simple trick to rename file and put different end to it like .jpeg .mp3-then either try to open with correct software or rename back if system doesnt scramble it afterwards,works with txt files wouldn't be sure about ms thou.If you'd want to leave it otherwise :pac:

Merrion

You can directly edit a PDF - in fact you can even do it in Word with the right plug-ins.
There are "digital rights management" tools for MS Word and PDF

ressem

Paulw wrote: »

To stop the document itself from being altered, you could have it converted to PDF. You can't directly edit a pdf document.

That's not correct. Tools like Adobe Acrobat, Foxit exist for modifying PDF.

The usual options are

Watermark (i.e. an identifying text in the background) to discourage scanning, recognising text, and reusing.
http://www.howtogeek.com/147552/how-to-add-a-watermark-to-a-document-in-word-2013/

+

Password protection
(In Word 2013, under File / Info / Protect Document.)
https://support.office.com/en-in/article/Add-or-remove-protection-in-your-document-workbook-or-presentation-05084cc3-300d-4c1a-8416-38d3e37d6826

Or in Adobe Acrobat similar exists under Tools / Protection

alb

kala85 wrote: »

Can anybody give me some advice on how to protect a document from being copied or altered.

I am currently doing up a word document and I want to make it difficult for someone to copy it and pass it off as their own.

You can make it difficult to copy, but ultimately, in general anything digital can be copied. You may look into registering ownership of the content with something like https://www.ascribe.io/ You can at least use something like that to prove the document existed on a certain date and that you registered as the owner of it on that date.