What to redact on a photo of your driving licence
The EU photocard numbers its fields. Here is which numbers matter, and the one case where you should cover less.
Short answer
- The licence number is the whole document — in Spain it is your DNI or NIE, and in the UK the driver number encodes your surname, date of birth and sex.
- Field 12 on the back is health data — codes 01 to 05 and the vehicle-adaptation codes describe a medical condition, a special category under GDPR Article 9.
- Car hire is the redact-less case — the desk needs the number, the expiry and the categories, so cover the other document you hand over instead.
- In Great Britain, send a DVLA check code, not a photo — it proves entitlement, expires after 21 days, and shows nothing you did not choose to show.
Nobody photographs their passport to sell a bicycle. People photograph their driving licence for almost anything — a car hire booking, a car sharing signup, a private car sale, an insurance quote, a courier platform’s onboarding chat, a friend of a friend who wants to borrow the van. The licence feels like the casual one, the ID you carry rather than the ID you lock away.
It is not. Depending on where it was issued, a licence photo can give away more than a passport data page does.
Why the licence is not the harmless document
Three things make it worse than people assume.
The number is often not a number. It looks like a serial, but in several countries it is derived from data about you. That is covered below, and it is the single most important thing on the card.
It carries a signature. Passports do too, but a licence lives in a wallet and gets photographed in bad light on a kitchen table far more often, so the signature ends up in more inboxes.
The back is a medical record in miniature. The restriction codes were designed to be read by a police officer at the roadside, not by a marketplace buyer, and some of them state plainly that you have a condition.
The numbered fields, and what each one is
Every EU and EEA photocard follows the same model, set out in Annex I of Directive 2006/126/EC. That is genuinely useful: the layout differs cosmetically between countries, but the numbers do not, so instructions written for a German card work on an Irish, Spanish or Polish one.
The front carries items 1 to 8. The back carries the category table — 9, 10, 11 and 12 — plus a legend explaining the numbers.
| # | Field | On a copy |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Surname | Keep |
| 2 | Given name(s) | Keep |
| 3 | Date and place of birth | Hide |
| 4a | Date of issue | Depends |
| 4b | Date of expiry | Depends — a hire desk needs it |
| 4c | Issuing authority | Depends |
| 4d | Optional administrative number | Hide |
| 5 | Licence number | Depends — hide by default |
| 6 | Photograph | Keep |
| 7 | Signature | Hide |
| 8 | Address, where printed | Hide |
| 9 | Categories | Depends |
| 10 | First-issue date per category | Depends |
| 11 | Expiry per category | Depends |
| 12 | Restriction codes | Hide unless needed |
Field 8 is optional under the directive and most countries have stopped printing it, but check your card. If your address is on there, it is almost never what was asked for — the same point applies to the back of a national ID card, covered in DNI vs passport: what’s different.
What the licence number gives away
This varies by country, and the difference is large.
Spain. In practice the number in field 5 is your DNI, or your NIE if you are a foreign resident — eight digits and a letter, the same string a bank or a landlord would ask for. A photo of a Spanish permiso is therefore about as revealing as a photo of the DNI itself, which very few people realise.
Great Britain. The DVLA driver number is sixteen characters and is not random. The first five are your surname padded with nines, the next six encode your date of birth with your sex folded into the month digits, then your initials, then check characters. Anyone who knows the format reads your name and birthday straight off the card, even with field 3 covered.
Germany, Austria, Switzerland and most of the rest. The number is a serial issued by the authority. It identifies your record but does not decode into anything about you. It still deserves a bar — it is the key to your file — but hiding it is less urgent than it is in Madrid or Manchester.
If you are unsure which case you are in, treat it as the worst one and cover it.
The back of the card: categories and codes
The table on the back lists each category you hold, the date you first got it (10), the date it expires (11) and any codes (12).
Column 12 is the part worth stopping on. The codes are harmonised across the EU by the same directive. 78 means you are restricted to vehicles with automatic transmission — common, unremarkable, and not medical. Sitting in the same column, though, are 01 (sight correction), 02 (hearing or communication aid), 03 (limb prosthesis or orthosis), 05 (restricted driving, such as daylight only) and the vehicle-adaptation codes in the 10s to 40s, which exist because the driver has a physical impairment.
Those are statements about your health. Under Article 9 of the GDPR, health data is a special category with a narrower set of lawful bases than ordinary personal data. A marketplace buyer or a group chat has no basis at all. Cover column 12 unless the recipient has an actual reason to read it.
Where you should redact less, not more
This is the part most redaction advice gets backwards.
A car hire company is not being nosy. It writes the rental agreement, the insurance cover and any later speeding fine or toll against your licence, so it needs the number at 5, the expiry at 4b and the categories at 9 — and it needs to confirm the licence is currently valid. Cover those and the booking fails. What you can control is the second document they usually ask for alongside it, and what happens to the copy. That is set out in car rental ID copy: what you can’t redact. In Spain, note that vehicle rental sits inside the same registration duty as hotels under Royal Decree 933/2021, so the desk is obliged to record identity fields and a redacted copy will simply be rejected — one of the cases in when redacting your ID won’t work.
An insurer quoting a policy is in a similar position on the number and the categories, though rarely on your address or signature.
Everything else is the ordinary case:
- A private buyer or seller in a car sale. Ownership is proved by the registration document, not by your licence.
- A car sharing or ride-hailing platform’s chat window, as opposed to its verified onboarding flow.
- A gig or courier platform collecting documents by email or WhatsApp.
- A marketplace listing where someone wants “proof you’re real”.
- A friend, host or hirer who wants a photo “just in case”.
In every one of those, cover 3, 5, 7, 12 and anything at 4d or 8, and send a watermarked copy naming the recipient. None of them has a legal claim to the rest.
The British shortcut worth knowing
If your licence is a Great Britain one, you often do not need to send an image at all. The DVLA lets you view or share your driving licence record by generating a check code, valid for 21 days, which a hire company or an employer uses together with the last eight characters of your driver number. It proves entitlement and shows endorsements, expires by itself, and leaves no photograph of your card on anyone’s server. Where an equivalent exists, prefer it to a photo every time.
Doing it
The method is the same as for any identity document: solid bars rather than blur, a watermark tied to one recipient, a flattened export, and the original never leaving your phone. How to redact a passport or ID card covers the technique, and why a photo of your ID is enough for identity theft covers what happens when you skip it.
Anonymize my ID does the whole sequence on-device in about a minute, and a licence is just another card to it — photograph it, cover the numbered fields above, watermark it for whoever asked. The one thing no app can do is decide what the recipient legitimately needs. That part is the table above, and it is worth thirty seconds before you press send.
Redact a driving licence photo, step by step
- Work out what they actually need to see. Entitlement to drive means fields 9 to 11 on the back. Identity means your name and photograph. Almost nobody needs all of it, and a private buyer or a chat window needs none of it.
- Photograph the card on a plain background, offline. Use an app that processes the image on your device so the unredacted original is never uploaded anywhere. Shoot both sides only if both were asked for.
- Cover the licence number at field 5. Put a solid bar over it, not a blur. This is the single field that most needs hiding: in several countries it is derived from your national ID number or from your name and date of birth.
- Cover date and place of birth (3) and your signature (7). Add the optional administrative number at 4d and the address at field 8 if your country prints them. Leave fields 1, 2 and 6 visible so you can still be matched to the copy.
- Deal with the back of the card. The category table carries dates at 10 and 11 and restriction codes at 12. Cover column 12 unless the recipient has a reason to see it, because those codes can describe a medical condition.
- Watermark for one recipient and one purpose, then export flattened. Tile text such as 'For [company] car hire, 10 August 2026' across the whole image so it cannot be cropped out, flatten the file, and send only that version.
Frequently asked questions
Is a driving licence really as sensitive as a passport?
In several countries it is more exposed, because it is shared far more casually. A Spanish permiso carries your DNI or NIE number in field 5, so a licence photo hands over the same identifier a DNI photo would. A Great Britain photocard encodes your surname, date of birth and sex inside the driver number itself. The document is smaller; the leak is not.
What do the codes on the back of my licence mean?
Field 12 holds harmonised codes set out in Annex I of the EU driving licence directive. Code 78 restricts you to automatic transmission. Codes 01 to 05 and the vehicle-adaptation codes cover sight correction, hearing aids, prostheses and modified controls. Those describe a health condition, which GDPR Article 9 treats as a special category of data, so they are worth covering by default.
Should I redact my licence for a car hire desk?
Less than you might expect. The desk has a real reason to see the licence number, the expiry date at 4b and the categories at 9, because the rental agreement, the insurance and any later traffic fine are written against them. Redact the second document they usually ask for instead, and ask whether they keep a copy or only check it.
A private buyer wants my licence to prove I own the car. Should I send it?
No. Ownership is proved by the registration document and the sale contract, not by your licence. A buyer who wants a photo of your licence is asking for your identifier, your date of birth and your signature in one image, with no obligation to delete it afterwards. Send the registration document with its own sensitive fields covered instead.
Can I prove I am allowed to drive without sending a photo at all?
In Great Britain, yes. The DVLA lets you generate a check code from your licence record, which a hire company or employer can use for 21 days alongside the last eight characters of your driver number. It shows entitlement and endorsements without you handing over an image of the card. Most other countries have no equivalent yet, though Austria now offers a digital licence in its official wallet app.