In accordance with what is specified in the document “Profiles de Certificados Electrónicos” of the Directorate of Information and Communications Technologies of the Ministry of Finance and Public Administrations , which defines, among others, a qualified certificate profile for public workers with the aim of guaranteeing their interoperability with the applications of Public Administrations at the state level, the CommonName field of these must contain both the full name of the worker and their DNI.

To meet this requirement, the new qualified certificate profiles for public workers offered by the AOC Consortium based on the adaptation of the certificates to the eIDAS regulations, the certificates include this change .

Below are two alternatives to prevent the certificate holder's ID from being displayed when signing the document:

Hide the ID from the signature image in the PDF

If you want to hide the DNI when signing a PDF , you will also have to hide the name and surnames, since they will now be in the same CN field (Name, Surnames and NIF). Likewise, the CN field can always be seen, as in all certificates prior to the application of this regulation, by consulting the properties of the document's signature. These steps only imply that it is not shown in the visible signature field :

To hide the CN field, follow these steps:

  • Go to the “All Tools” section and select “Use a Certificate”:

all tools section and select use a certificate

  • Make a box where you want to sign.
  • Choose the certificate you want to sign with and click “Continue”.

Select the T-CAT

  • A screen will appear showing how the signature to be created will be displayed. At this point, click “Create” to generate a new signature appearance.

Press create

  • Then, mark the signature aspect as "None" (this is only a recommendation for better visualization of the signature) and uncheck the box that says "Name", so that we will uncheck the CommonName field where the DNI appears in the certificates adapted to the eIDAS regulations.

Customizing the appearance of the signature

  • When you save the signature, it will look like the one below:

signature example

Make a true copy of the signed document

Another option to avoid showing the certificate holder's ID when signing the document is not to publish the signed document, but rather an authentic copy of it, without the cryptographic signatures. In this way, the document will contain an electronic seal of the organization that made the copy and published it as a guarantee of authenticity.

This copy could also include a CSV that allows its validation against an electronic office, but this would be optional.