# Redacting a crypto wallet screenshot or video: cover it, then test the file

Source: https://flexdger.com/blog/redact-crypto-screenshot
Updated: 2026-11-01
Published: 2026-10-15
Topic: Video and creators (https://flexdger.com/blog/creators)

> Redact a crypto wallet screenshot or video: opaque boxes beat blur, how cropped pixels and old Markup bugs leak, a pre-send audit, and video frame checks.

Hiding a wallet number is easy; keeping it hidden is the hard part. This guide covers the four ways a covered detail comes back, a list of what a wallet screen gives away, device by device steps, a method for video, and the case for building the image instead.

**Short answer:** Use opaque, solid boxes and nothing softer: blur, pixelation and see-through markers can be undone. Cover the address, any QR code, transaction hashes, exact amounts and times, and names, then send a freshly captured copy, never the file you edited. For video, the box must hold on every single frame.

## Four ways a hidden number comes back

People rarely fail at redaction because they forgot to hide something. They fail because the thing they hid was only disguised. Four patterns account for most leaks.

- **Softening instead of covering.** Pixelated text can be rebuilt by software. Bishop Fox published a tool for this in 2022 and its advice is to use black bars over the whole text, with no blur, pixelation or other effect. Wallet screens make the guessing easy: one font, a short alphabet and the same layout every time.
- **A marker that is not fully opaque.** In 2018 9to5Mac found that the iOS Markup marker stayed slightly see-through even after repeated passes, so raising the exposure brought the text back.
- **Pixels that stay inside the file.** The 2023 aCropalypse flaw let cropped or edited parts of an image be recovered from Pixel's Markup tool and from the Windows Snipping Tool.
- **The original that never left.** Your camera roll, the recently deleted album, cloud backups and the chat you used to send it to yourself all still hold the uncovered version.

Keep those four in mind and the rest of the page is just the procedure that avoids them.

## Why a wallet screen gives away more than a bank statement

A support ticket, an accountant's request for a transaction date, a forum thread about a strange token: all ordinary reasons to share a wallet screen. The trouble is that on a bank statement one number is sensitive and the rest is noise. In a wallet, nearly every element is a lookup key into a public ledger. Bitcoin.org's privacy page states that any address's balance and transactions are visible to anyone. Ethereum.org lists what a block explorer shows for a single transfer: the hash, the time, the sender, the receiver, the tokens and the fee. It also mentions that people are often told to use several accounts so assets cannot be tracked easily. One item you forget to cover undoes that separation.

## The inventory: what to cover before you send

| On the screen | What someone can do with it |
|---|---|
| Address, complete or shortened | The complete one is the account. A shortened one beside an amount and a time leaves only a handful of candidates. |
| QR code | It encodes the address. QRcode.com, the site of the inventor's company, explains the error correction that restores data when a code is dirty or damaged, so a half-hidden code may scan anyway. |
| Transaction hash or explorer link | One hash opens the whole transaction with both addresses in it. |
| Exact amount plus timestamp | Together they form a search. Rounding the number in your caption does not alter the picture. |
| Account name, .eth style name, unique avatar | Each one points straight at an address or a person. |
| A rare token or odd mix of tokens | Enough to single out one wallet. |
| Everything around the app | Notifications, other tabs, the address bar, bookmarks, lock screen widgets. |

A recovery phrase or a private key must never appear in a screenshot, covered or not. Delete such an image everywhere, cloud backups included. Kraken's support pages warn that anyone with remote access to a device can open and copy screenshots and wallet backups.

## The procedure, in order

1. **Crop to the minimum.** Less picture means fewer things to cover.
2. **Draw solid shapes.** A flat fill at 100 percent opacity over every item in the inventory, with some margin, covering the whole line and not just the digits.
3. **Export or recapture.** Save a new file, or put the finished image on screen and take a fresh screenshot of it.
4. **Test your own work.** Zoom into each box. Open the file in another app. On a duplicate, push brightness and exposure to the maximum; whatever shows was not hidden.
5. **Beware photos of screens.** A direct screenshot is cleaner. Apple's personal safety guide notes that photos can carry the location where they were taken, readable by the people you share them with.

## Device by device

### iPhone

Photos, then the screenshot, then Markup, then Add Shape. Apple's guide lets you choose the fill colour and opacity, so pick a solid fill at full strength. Skip the pen and marker: both have an opacity slider, and the marker has the see-through history noted above.

### Mac

Press Shift-Command-4 to capture, then click the thumbnail in the corner to annotate with filled shapes. For a PDF, Preview offers a Redact tool, and Intego points out that the redaction becomes permanent once the file is saved, so keep a spare copy for editing.

### Windows

Snipping Tool has a Quick redact feature, but Microsoft's list covers only email addresses and phone numbers. A wallet address, hash or recovery phrase is invisible to it, so cover those by hand. Install updates as well: Microsoft patched the cropped-data flaw in March 2023.

### Android

The same bug first appeared in Markup on Google Pixel phones. BleepingComputer reported that roughly 80 percent of an original image could come back, and that anything shared in the five years before the March 2023 fix stays exposed. Update the phone, follow the procedure above and share a fresh capture.

## Video: the box has to survive every frame

A screenshot is one chance to get it right; a recording gives you hundreds of chances to get it wrong. The principle is unchanged, an opaque box and no blur, but the workflow differs.

1. Work on a duplicate and write down every time range with the wallet visible, including the moment the app opens and closes.
2. Place a solid, full-opacity block over each item. If the phone tilts or the page scrolls, track it or keyframe it.
3. Start early and end late by a few frames, because transitions are where covers slip.
4. Look beyond the display: reflections, a second monitor, a tab showing a block explorer, notifications, and your own voice reading an address aloud.
5. Check the extras: thumbnail, first and last frames, captions, the description and a pinned comment.
6. Review the exported file, frame by frame at full size, not the editing timeline. If an uncovered version was ever public, delete it; anything already downloaded stays out there.

- **Premiere Pro** can make a mask follow a moving subject. Adobe says tracking works best on a well-defined, high-contrast subject and tells you to review the result. For numbers, a solid graphic above the clip with keyframes is the more dependable choice.
- **YouTube after upload:** the computer editor has a custom blur that tracks an object or stays fixed. It is only a blur, so for an address it is better to upload a properly covered file.
- **On iPhone:** use Markup with a filled shape for a still frame, or an editing app that can hold a shape over a region for a chosen duration.

Automatic tracking and one-tap blur save effort, but scrolling digits, swipes and a hand crossing the display are where they stumble. Use them for a first pass only.

## What no box can repair

A flawless cover still leaves context. A screenshot posted on the day of a transfer, with a token and a rounded amount, can be matched to the chain by a patient reader ([why redaction is weaker than it looks](https://flexdger.com/blog/demo-a-wallet-without-real-balances)). The recipient also learns the wallet is yours, which suits an accountant better than a public forum. And the originals remain in the places listed at the top of this page.

## When the image is only an illustration, build it instead

Support and tax questions need the real screen, redacted and sent privately. Plenty of images do not: a post about a pump, a tutorial step, a reaction meme, a slide showing what a wallet looks like. There the numbers merely illustrate a point and nothing on screen has to be yours.

For those, skip covering your own wallet. A crypto wallet app simulator, also known as a larp wallet, draws a believable wallet screen from balances you type, holds no funds and never touches a blockchain. A screen made that way has no address to leak, no hash to look up and no original in your camera roll telling another story. There is nothing under the boxes, because there are no boxes. Flexdger Wallet is one such app, a paid one we make ([how a larp wallet works](https://flexdger.com/guides/larp-wallet)). You can try a composed screen in the [live demo](https://flexdger.com/demo). For video, the section above still applies to any real footage, and for posts about profits see [what one gains screenshot gives away](https://flexdger.com/blog/post-crypto-gains-online).

## Where the line is

- **A built screenshot is an illustration.** Label it, in the image or the caption, as a mockup with made-up balances.
- **Never send it where a genuine record is expected:** support, an accountant, a lender, a landlord, a buyer or a seller, or as evidence of a payment or holdings. Passing a mockup off as real is deception, and our [terms of use](https://flexdger.com/terms) forbid it.
- **Read other people's images the same way.** A wallet picture, covered or not, proves nothing about a balance; only the chain or the owner's wallet does ([how to spot a fake crypto wallet screenshot](https://flexdger.com/blog/spot-a-fake-crypto-wallet-screenshot)).

Flexdger Wallet is not affiliated with Adobe, YouTube, Apple, Microsoft, Google or Kraken. Their names appear only to describe their rules and tools.

## Sources

- [YouTube Help, Blur your videos](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9057652), read 2026
- [Adobe Help, Track masks in Premiere](https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere/desktop/add-video-effects/work-with-masks/track-masks.html), 2026
- [Bitcoin.org, Protect your privacy](https://bitcoin.org/en/protect-your-privacy), 2026
- [ethereum.org, Block explorers](https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/data-and-analytics/block-explorers/), 2026
- [QRcode.com (DENSO WAVE), Error correction feature](https://www.qrcode.com/en/about/error_correction.html), 2026
- [Bishop Fox, Never Use Text Pixelation To Redact Sensitive Information](https://bishopfox.com/blog/unredacter-tool-never-pixelation), 2022
- [9to5Mac, iOS Markup is not designed to be a redaction tool](https://9to5mac.com/2018/03/13/ios-markup-reveal-redact-sensitive-info/), 2018
- [Apple iPhone User Guide, Markup shapes and stickers](https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/draw-and-handwrite-with-markup-iphcdb1d0bc7/ios), 2026
- [Apple iPhone User Guide, Draw and handwrite with Markup](https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/add-text-shapes-signatures-and-more-iph893c6f8bf/ios), 2026
- [Apple Support, Take a screenshot on Mac](https://support.apple.com/en-us/102646), 2026
- [Intego, Securely Redact Text in PDFs with Apple Preview on Mac](https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/securely-redact-text-in-pdfs-with-apple-preview-on-mac/), 2024
- [Microsoft Support, Snipping Tool screenshots](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots-00246869-1843-655f-f220-97299b865f6b), 2026
- [BleepingComputer, Windows Snipping tool flaw update](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-pushes-oob-security-updates-for-windows-snipping-tool-flaw/), 2023
- [BleepingComputer, Google Pixel flaw allowed recovery of cropped images](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/google-pixel-flaw-allowed-recovery-of-redacted-cropped-images/), 2023
- [Apple Personal Safety User Guide, Location metadata in Photos](https://support.apple.com/guide/personal-safety/manage-location-metadata-in-photos-ips0d7a5df82/web), 2026
- [Kraken Support, Risks of remote access software](https://support.kraken.com/articles/risks-of-remote-access-software), 2026

## Questions

### Is a solid black box really the only safe way to hide text in an image?

It is the only method that leaves nothing to analyse. Security researchers have shown that pixelated text can be rebuilt, and a see-through marker leaves faint traces of what lies beneath. A fully opaque shape removes the information instead of disguising it.

### Why share a new screenshot instead of the edited one?

Some editors have stored pixels you cropped away inside the saved file. A new capture of the finished image contains only what is visibly on screen, so hidden leftovers cannot ride along.

### Can a partly covered QR code still be scanned?

Often yes. QR codes carry error correction so they survive dirt and damage, which means a smudge or a blur may not stop a scanner. Cover the entire code with an opaque shape.

### What is aCropalypse?

The nickname for a 2023 flaw that let people recover cropped or edited parts of an image saved by Google Pixel's Markup tool (CVE-2023-21036) and by Windows Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch (CVE-2023-28303). Both were patched that March, but images saved earlier can still hold the data.

### How do I hide a wallet address in a screen recording?

Place a solid, fully opaque shape over the whole row for the full time it appears, extend it a few frames either side, track it if the screen moves, and check the exported file at full size instead of the timeline preview.

### Can I blur a video after posting it on YouTube?

On a computer, yes: YouTube Studio has a custom blur that can follow an object or stay still. Saved edits cannot be reverted, and an unedited video above 100,000 views may only allow a face blur unless the channel is in the YouTube Partner Program. Copies saved before the edit are unaffected.

### Should I redact a screenshot that contains a recovery phrase?

No, delete it. A seed phrase or private key must not exist in an image at all, covered or not. Remove the file, plus any copy in a cloud backup or chat.