One way to protect your PDF files from prying eyes or ill-intentioned individuals is to never store them on a computer that is not entirely yours. Nonetheless, there are unavoidable situations where you are forced to share a machine and move some of your work documents on it. The only action left for you then is to try to secure PDF documents or at least add some restrictions to them. If you don't mind others seeing your work, but you want to prevent them from altering your information or stealing it, Softaken PDF Locker might prove handy.

Softaken PDF Locker is not that type of application that you'd go around recommending to everybody you interact with, and the first reason for that is the abundance of this category of tools. Still, you can stumble upon it and consider it one of the easiest-to-use out here, as the interface and the overall process is very intuitive and require less to no experience at all.

The layout comprises a small window where the key features are neatly presented, and securing a PDF takes no more than a couple of minutes. To lock or restrict a document, one has to first select it, and then click on the Secure PDF Now button. Next, a new tab will pop up, containing checkboxes of the restrictions displayed in the main pane. Pick the features that you see fit, and finalize the operation by choosing an output location.

The first and most important aspect of this app is password protection. Even if it is optional, applying a password can prevent anyone from accessing your data. In case you want to permit access to your PDFs but don't want anyone to be able to steal from them, you can remove certain rights like printing, editing, copying text or graphic elements, or block annotations, if you wish.

To summarize, this utility can either help its users with password protecting their whole PDF, thus restricting full access to it, or allow access but prevent some actions that can lead to data alteration or theft.