Redact your passport before you send a copy or use AI

To redact your passport before you send a copy, keep what the recipient needs and cover the rest. On an Irish passport that usually means leaving your name and photo visible, covering the two machine readable lines at the foot of the data page and any signature, writing a watermark that says who the copy is for and when, and sending a file with no metadata attached. The passport number stays only when the person asking has to record it.

If the copy is going to an AI instead, to ask about a form, redact the name, number and photo as well. The tool at the top of this page does that in one screen. Drop in a photo or PDF of the data page or your Passport Card: it redacts everything except your name, passport number and photo, and adds a watermark you complete. Your passport is one of the ID documents Nonimo covers in your browser.

What to redact on a copy of your Irish passport

The data page of an Irish passport book is built to the same international layout as most passports: a photo on one side, your details beside it, and two lines of letters, digits and chevrons along the bottom. Every field on it is there for a border officer. Very few of them are there for a letting agent or a new employer.

So the question for each field is not whether it is sensitive in the abstract but whether this recipient needs it. Passport copies end up in files long after the matter that justified them, which is why our list of what to redact in an Irish document treats the passport number as an identifier in its own right.

field on the data page	keep it?
Photo, surname and forenames	yes: this is what they are checking
Passport number	only if they have to record it
Date of birth	if they ask for it; otherwise cover
Place of birth and sex	cover unless asked
Dates of issue and expiry	usually keep: they show the passport is valid
Signature, where it appears	cover
The two lines at the foot	cover

The advice column is ours. The fields are those printed on an Irish passport data page.

The two lines at the foot repeat the page

The machine readable zone is the part people forget, because it does not look like personal data. It is. Those two lines carry your surname and forenames, the passport number, your nationality, date of birth, sex and the expiry date, in a format any document reader takes in at a glance.

Covering the number in the body of the page and leaving it in the lines below protects nothing. If you are going to cover the number at all, the lines go too, and if you are keeping the number, the lines still add nothing the recipient cannot read above them.

Whether your signature appears on the data page depends on when the book was issued, so look before you copy. If it is there, cover it: a signature has no job to do on an emailed copy, and it is the detail someone needs to imitate you on paper.

The passport number: keep it when they have to write it down

Some recipients genuinely need the number. A bank or a solicitor verifying who you are will record it, and a travel booking for a group may ask for it. A landlord comparing applicants, a club, or a course provider almost never does.

When the number has to stay, the watermark does the protecting. A copy that names its recipient and the month is far less useful to anyone who finds it later, which is the point of the next section but one.

The Passport Card: the same details on a smaller copy

The Department of Foreign Affairs issues the Passport Card only to Irish citizens who already hold a valid passport book, and it says the personal details on the card must be an exact match for the book. It is valid for five years at most, and shorter if the book expires sooner.

That exact match is what matters for a copy. A photo of the card gives away everything the data page does, plus a document number of its own, and the card has machine readable lines on the back. Copy the front only, unless the recipient asks for both sides, and cover the same fields you would on the book.

500,000+passports issued in the first half of 2026

Almost 370,000of them to people across the island of Ireland

26 June 2026new design for the book and the card

The Department said in August that over half a million passports were issued in the first half of 2026, almost 370,000 of them to people across the island, and that anyone applying since the end of June receives the newly designed book and card. Older books stay in use until they expire, so for years both designs will be photographed and sent. The fields you cover are the same on either.

If the card or the book goes as a scanned PDF rather than a photo, the cover has to survive inside the file as well, which is the trap our guide on redacting a PDF properly works through.

Watermark your passport copy: what to write in it

A watermark on a passport copy is not decoration. It turns a general purpose identity document into a single use one, and it only works if it is specific. Three things belong in it: who the copy is for, what it is for, and the month.

For Church Road tenancy use only · October 2026

If that copy later turns up attached to a loan application or a new mobile contract, the line says plainly that it was never meant for either, and anyone checking it can see so. A watermark that just says copy tells nobody anything.

Across the whole page, or a band at the edge

In the tool the watermark is on from the start, and you can switch it off. It comes in two styles. All over repeats your text diagonally across the whole document, over the photo and the details, so there is no clean corner to crop and no area to retouch. It is the right choice for a landlord, an agency or anyone you will not deal with again.

The stamp is a single discreet band. It suits the cases where the recipient has to read every character clearly, such as a bank’s identity check, while still marking the copy as theirs and dated. In both styles the text field starts with a line to complete and the current month already in it; you add who the copy is for.

All over

Your line repeated diagonally over the whole page, photo included. For landlords, agencies and anyone you will not deal with again.

Stamp

One discreet band that leaves every character readable. For a bank or a solicitor who has to check the details.

Either way the watermark is burned into the pixels of the file you download. It is not a layer sitting on top that someone can lift off in an editor, which is the same reason a black box drawn over the text of a PDF is not a redaction until the text under it is gone.

Who is asking for the copy, and what they actually need

In Ireland the request usually comes from one of four places, and the law treats them very differently. Knowing which one you are dealing with tells you how much to cover.

who is asking	what they need	source
Letting agent, before any offer	generally nothing yet	DPC tenant guidance
Landlord, once you are the chosen tenant	proof of identity, watermarked	DPC tenant guidance
Bank, credit union, solicitor, accountant	the full document, verified and kept	CJA 2010, ss. 33 and 55
Car insurer	the driver number on your licence	Citizens Information

A letting agent: only once you are the chosen tenant

The Data Protection Commission has published guidance on exactly this, because its helpdesk is frequently asked about it. Its position is that seeking references, financial details or proof of identity from numerous potential tenants before making a specific offer will generally not be consistent with data minimisation.

The money laundering rules that bind banks do not change this for an ordinary letting. The 2010 Act brings property service providers acting in lettings within its scope only for transactions where the monthly rent is at least €10,000.

€10,000

In plain terms: at the viewing or application stage, a passport copy is usually not something an agent needs. Once you have been offered the tenancy, identification becomes part of entering the agreement. That is the copy worth sending, and it is the one to watermark with the property and the month.

A bank, credit union or solicitor: a check the law requires

For a bank, a credit union, a solicitor or an accountant, the request is not optional on their side. Section 33 of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 requires them to identify you and verify that identity on the basis of documents they can rely on, including documents from a government source.

Section 55 then requires them to keep the original or a copy of every document used for that check, for at least five years after they stop providing services to you. So expect them to need the number and the photo clearly, and use the stamp style if you watermark. Practices that onboard clients, such as accountants doing identity checks, hold these copies for years.

5 years

What you can still control is the channel. A bank’s own app or secure upload is a better route than an attachment to an email address someone gave you over the phone, and a watermark naming the institution and the month still marks the copy as theirs.

Driving licence and Public Services Card: the other Irish ID copies

The passport is not the only card people are asked to photograph. A copy of the driving licence comes up with insurers and car hire, and the Public Services Card turns up in requests where it has no business being.

Your NDLS licence and the driver number at 4(d)

The plastic licence issued through the NDLS carries your photo, name, date of birth and signature, and a number at section 4(d) that is your driver number. Since 31 March 2025 you have had to give it, and the driver number of any named driver, when you take out motor insurance.

31 March 2025

Outside motor insurance, few recipients have a reason to see the driver number. For anyone else, cover 4(d), the signature and the date of birth unless they ask for it. Motor policy files now carry the number too, which is why insurance brokers handling those files treat it like a PPS number.

The Public Services Card is not a card to send

Here Irish law is unusually direct. Section 263(4) of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 makes it an offence for anyone to seek to have a Public Services Card produced to them unless they are the holder, someone acting for the holder, a specified body in a transaction, or someone in a transaction with a specified body where the PPS number on the card is relevant.

A landlord, a shop, a gym or a private employer outside that list should not be asking for the card. The card also prints your PPS number, which has its own statutory limits on who may use it, set out in our guide on whether a PPSN is personal data.

on the Public Services Card	printed	held electronically
Name and photograph	yes	yes
PPS number	yes	yes
Signature	yes	yes
Card issue number and expiry date	yes	yes
Date and place of birth	no	yes
Sex and nationality	no	yes
Former surnames, yours and your mother’s	no	yes

Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, s. 263(1A) and (1B), as amended.

When someone outside that list asks for an identity document, offer the passport or the licence instead, covered and watermarked with their name and the month.

How to send a copy of your passport safely: email, WhatsApp or upload

The cover and the watermark deal with what is visible. Two more things travel with a photo of your passport that nobody sees: the data inside the file and the route it takes. Both are worth handling before you press send.

1. Strip the metadata. A phone photo records the device, the time and, with location switched on, where you were standing when you took it. The tool downloads a clean file without that information; our guide to the metadata inside photos and documents explains what each field gives away.
2. Check the recipient. Confirm the address or the upload link through a channel you already trust, such as the agency’s own website, rather than the email that asked for the copy.
3. Prefer the upload. A bank’s app or a secure portal keeps the copy out of mail threads. Email and WhatsApp work, but the file then lives in both inboxes or both phones.
4. Clean up afterwards. When the matter is closed, delete the copy from your sent items, the chat and your camera roll, and ask the recipient to delete theirs.

That last request is a reasonable one. The DPC’s guidance for landlords says personal data should not be kept longer than the purpose needs, and the same principle applies to anyone holding a copy of your passport for a finished transaction, other than those, like banks, with a legal duty to keep it.

Before you show your passport to ChatGPT or another AI

Sometimes the reason for photographing a passport is a form you do not understand. For that, also tap the three details the tool leaves visible, your name, passport number and photo, so everything is redacted before you show the image to a chatbot. And if a full copy went in by mistake, removing it from your ChatGPT history means the chat, its memory and any saved file, one by one.

A photo you upload to a chatbot is kept with the conversation, like anything you type, for as long as the provider’s rules say. What the providers keep of an upload is set out in our guide to what ChatGPT keeps of your data. In ChatGPT a photo can also outlast the conversation, in Library, which our guide to whether ChatGPT keeps your photos covers alongside the other three assistants.

Redact and watermark your passport on your phone or computer

The tool is one screen and works the same on a phone as on a laptop. On a phone you can take the picture straight from the camera; on a computer you drop in a file. It accepts JPG, PNG, WEBP, PDF, including PDFs of several pages, and the HEIC photos an iPhone takes by default.

It recognises the data page of the current Irish passport and of the 2013 design, and the front of the Passport Card. As soon as it has read the document, your name, passport number and photo stay visible and everything else is redacted: the signature, the dates, the place of birth and the bottom lines. The watermark is already on.

1. Is the copy for a bank, credit union, solicitor or accountant checking your identity?

   YesLeave the number and photo readable, choose the stamp and add their name.

   NoGo to the next question.

2. Do they have to record your passport number?

   YesLeave the number as it is and keep the all over watermark.

   NoTap the passport number to redact it too.

Then download it without metadata and send it through their own upload if they have one.

Each detail appears as a chip with its own name, such as Signature, Date of birth, Expiry date or Bottom lines (MRZ). Tap one to redact that detail or show it again: if the recipient needs to see the passport is in date, show the expiry date. You can also switch between the document only and the whole photo.

Then download the result as PNG, JPG or PDF, with the boxes and the watermark burned in, and the copy carries no location or camera data. Your document never leaves your device: it is read and redacted in your browser. The Nonimo app for Mac and Windows also opens a passport photo or scan from your computer, Passport Card included, and redacts and watermarks it the same way.

For the text you paste into AI tools at work, the same habit is built into our app: software that covers names, PPS numbers and Eircodes before your text reaches ChatGPT.

Sources

• Department of Foreign Affairs, Passport Card. That the card is available to Irish citizens who hold a valid passport book, that the personal details must exactly match the book, and that it is valid for five years at most. ireland.ie
• Department of Foreign Affairs, press release of 10 August 2026. Over half a million passports issued in the first half of 2026, almost 370,000 to people across the island of Ireland, and the new design for the book and card for applications since the end of June. gov.ie
• Data Protection Commission, Guidance on Requesting Personal Data from Prospective Tenants (July 2019). That seeking proof of identity and similar information from numerous potential tenants before a specific offer will generally not be consistent with data minimisation; storage limitation. dataprotection.ie
• Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, sections 25, 33 and 55 (revised). Who is a designated person, including the €10,000 monthly rent threshold for letting intermediaries in section 25(1)(f); verification on documents including those from a government source in section 33(2)(a); keeping a copy of the documents for at least five years in section 55.
• Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, section 263 (revised). What is printed on a Public Services Card and what is held only electronically, in subsections (1A) and (1B), and the offence in subsection (4). revisedacts.lawreform.ie
• Citizens Information, Motor insurance driver number (4 April 2025). That since 31 March 2025 the driver number of each driver is needed to take out motor insurance, and that it is at section 4(d) of the licence or learner permit. citizensinformation.ie