Bank routing numbers printed on personal checks, direct deposit forms, bank letters, and account statements are more sensitive than most people realize. Combined with your account number — which appears on the same document — a routing number is everything someone needs to initiate an ACH transfer, set up unauthorized recurring payments, or create counterfeit paper checks in your name. When you need to photograph a check or banking document to share proof of your bank account, HideShot lets you black out the routing and account numbers in seconds, right in your browser, without uploading anything.
The most common scenario where this comes up is direct deposit setup — a new employer, freelance client, or platform asks you to provide a voided check or bank account photo as proof of your account details. In that situation, the recipient legitimately needs your routing and account numbers, but you should still be careful about how that image travels: who else might see the email, whether it gets stored on a shared drive, or whether the recipient's inbox is secure. For cases where you need to share with a broader audience — or you're not fully sure who has access — redacting the numbers and providing them separately is the safer approach.
Guide
Hiding routing numbers means making them invisible in the version you share, even when the original photo or screenshot still exists on your device. On this page you'll hide a routing number that typically appears in a screenshot of a bank-issued direct-deposit form or a snapshot of a paper check or deposit slip. The fields that need attention usually include the institution number at the bottom-left of a check stub and the wire and ACH routing pair (sometimes listed separately) — and any nearby context that helps a reader reconstruct them. Getting this right matters because fraudsters use leaked routing numbers to spoof legitimate wire instructions in business email compromise (bec) schemes.
Routing numbers sit on voided checks and payout screens. Payroll sending a direct-deposit confirmation and gig workers arguing a missing payout in a public thread should hide ABA digits in the image. The rest of the proof can remain.
What to Redact — and Why It Matters
The first job is to inventory what's actually visible. For a routing number, the high-priority fields are the 9-digit MICR string printed at the bottom-left, fractional routing notation in the upper-right corner of paper checks, and fractional routing notation in the upper-right corner of paper checks. Less obvious but equally important is the bank name + city block which can confirm the routing code — it's the one most people forget on the first pass, and it tends to be the field that re-identifies everything you carefully covered above. Walk down the image once with a checklist mindset, marking each instance you find. Routing numbers often appear next to account numbers in the same horizontal MICR strip — select the entire strip as one rectangle so you can't accidentally leave a sliver of either value exposed.
The reason this matters is concrete. check-washing rings scrape posted images for routing data and use it to print counterfeit checks against the same bank. That pattern is documented in fraud and harassment cases — not hypothetical. The two-minute redaction step you take before sharing is the single highest-leverage privacy move available for this kind of content.
HideShot handles a routing number entirely inside your browser. The image is loaded from your device into a local canvas; the redaction tools draw on that canvas; the exported PNG is generated by your browser's own rendering code. Nothing about the source file is transmitted to any HideShot server, because there isn't one in the path — the page is static, the JavaScript runs locally, and the only network traffic during the redaction itself is the page load that happened before you uploaded anything. For hide routing number in photo, that means the original never leaves your machine, the redacted version is generated locally, and you can use the tool with Wi-Fi turned off if you want to prove it to yourself.
Step-by-Step: How to Hide A Routing Number with HideShot
- Open the HideShot canvas above and drop your image directly onto it, or click the upload area and select the file. The image loads locally — your browser reads it from disk, no upload happens.
- Zoom in until a routing number fills enough of the canvas for you to draw precisely around it. Precision matters: a generous margin protects you against character-edge bleed, but too generous and you cover useful context.
- Select routing numbers with the rectangle or lasso tool. Choose 'Blackout' to cover them with an opaque block.
- Sweep the rest of the image for the indirect leaks listed above — the 9-digit MICR string printed at the bottom-left, fractional routing notation in the upper-right corner of paper checks, and anything in the surrounding chrome (URL bar, sidebar, timestamps) that could help a reader reconstruct what you just covered.
- Download the finished PNG. The export is a flattened image: the redacted pixels are baked in, the original pixels under your black blocks are gone, and the file is safe to share through whatever channel you were planning.
Common Mistakes When Hiding A Routing Number
Hiding the account number but leaving the routing number visible — alone, a routing number leaks which bank you use and helps phishers build a believable pretext. The routing number identifies the institution, branch group, and clearing region. Combined with your name or employer, it tells a scammer exactly which bank to impersonate when contacting you, and which wire fraud template to copy. Always cover both halves of the routing-account pair as a single unit.
Blurring the digits with a weak Gaussian radius that still leaves the numeric shape readable at 2x zoom. Routing numbers are short (9 digits) and printed in OCR-friendly fonts. A light blur preserves enough silhouette for OCR engines — or a human at a coffee shop — to reconstruct most or all digits. Use a heavy radius or, better, a solid black bar.
Black Out vs Blur vs Pixelate — Which to Use
For hide routing number in photo, the three options behave differently. Blur is fast and visually soft, but at small radii the original shape of routing numbers survives well enough for OCR or human reconstruction at 2x zoom. Pixelation breaks routing numbers into colored blocks — at 12-16 pixel block size it defeats both human reading and modern depixelation models, and it's the right choice when you want visible 'something was here' without revealing the data. Black-out (solid opaque block) is the strongest option: there is no signal under the block to reconstruct, and reviewers immediately understand the field was intentionally hidden. Hiding routing numbers with a solid block is the most reliable choice. Blur reads as softer but allows reconstruction at low radii.
The Risk of Sharing Unredacted Check Photos Online
A routing number and account number together are the two pieces of information required to make an ACH bank transfer in the United States. The ACH network is how direct deposits, bill payments, and bank-to-bank transfers work — and it's also the network that fraudsters use to drain checking accounts when they get hold of those two numbers. A photo of a personal check contains both numbers printed in MICR font along the bottom. If that photo reaches the wrong person — through a data breach, a forwarded email, or a hacked inbox — the numbers are as usable as a stolen card.
The problem is compounded by how casually check photos get shared. People photograph voided checks and text them, email them, upload them to HR portals, and send them through payment apps — all with good intentions and legitimate purposes. But each transmission is a potential exposure point. HideShot doesn't prevent you from sharing proof of your bank account when you need to — it just lets you control what information is visible in the photo itself. You can blur the routing and account numbers while leaving the bank name, your name, and the address fully visible as proof of identity. For full account strings on mobile banking screenshots, use blur bank account number alongside this check workflow.
Beyond checks, routing numbers appear on bank statement headers, wire transfer instruction documents, direct deposit setup forms, and some bank letters. Any time one of these documents gets photographed and shared — even within a company's HR system — the same risks apply. HideShot works on any photo or image file, regardless of the source document. If you can photograph it and see the routing number, you can redact it before sharing. The process takes under a minute and eliminates a significant exposure risk at essentially zero cost. When tax or identity forms appear in the same packet, also redact Social Security numbers in images before distribution.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a routing number and an account number, and do I need to hide both?
Your routing number identifies your bank — it's the same for every customer at your branch or region. Your account number identifies your specific account. Both appear along the bottom of a personal check in MICR font. For maximum security, blur both before sharing any check photo. The routing number alone isn't enough for most fraud, but combined with your account number it is — and they're always printed together.
Can I share a check photo with the routing and account numbers blurred and still use it as proof of account ownership?
Yes. A redacted check photo can still serve as proof that you have an account at a specific bank — your bank's name, your name, and your address are still visible. For situations where the recipient needs the actual numbers, provide them separately in a secure message or direct phone call rather than in the image itself.
Is it safe to photograph checks at all, even with redaction?
Redaction significantly reduces your risk. The most important thing is to control who receives the photo and how. Even with numbers redacted, avoid posting check photos publicly or in large group channels. Use HideShot to redact the sensitive numbers, then share only with the specific person who needs it, through a reasonably secure channel.
Does HideShot store or transmit my check photo in any way?
No. HideShot is a browser-based tool that processes your image entirely using JavaScript running on your own device. Your photo is never uploaded to any server, never transmitted over the internet, and never stored outside your browser tab. When you close the tab, the image is gone. Nothing about your check — including its routing number, account number, or your name — ever leaves your computer.