How to watermark your ID and documents for a letting agent or landlord

Why letting agents ask for so much

Before you can rent a flat or house in England, the landlord or letting agent has to carry out a Right to Rent check. That usually means a copy of your passport or another ID document. Then comes referencing: payslips, bank statements, sometimes a letter from your employer or a previous landlord. Most agents handle this carefully. But your documents travel by email, sit in inboxes and shared folders, and get passed to referencing companies. Every extra copy is one more chance for something to go wrong.

The fake listing scam

A common rental scam works like this. Someone posts an attractive flat at a fair price, often copied from a real advert. They say there is a lot of interest and ask you to send your ID and payslips ‘to secure the viewing’. The flat does not exist, and your documents end up being used to open accounts or take out credit in your name. A watermark that names the agent and the purpose makes such a copy far less useful. Anyone trying to reuse it would have to explain why your passport says ‘Right to Rent check – Martin Lettings Islington’ on it.

Be wary if you are asked for ID before you have seen the property, or asked to pay a deposit by bank transfer to secure a flat you have never visited. If you think you have been targeted, report it to Action Fraud and tell your bank straight away.

How to watermark your documents with Cachety

1. 1Open cachety.com in your browser. There is nothing to install and no account to create.
2. 2Drop your files onto the page, or tap to choose them. You can add your passport, payslips and bank statements all at once.
3. 3Type your watermark text, or pick the Housing template and adjust it. Add the agent's name, and press the button to add today's date.
4. 4Check the preview. The text is repeated diagonally across every page.
5. 5Download the watermarked copies and send those, never the originals.

Your files never leave your device. Cachety works inside your browser: there is no server that receives your documents. Once the page has loaded, you can even switch on aeroplane mode and it keeps working.

Applying to several flats? Use the Several recipients option to make a separate version for each agent, each with its own name on it. If a copy ever turns up somewhere it should not, you will know where it came from.

Hide what the agent does not need

An agent checking your income needs to see your salary going in, not what you spent at the chemist. You can draw boxes on the preview to black out account numbers or unrelated transactions. What you mask is really removed from the file, not just covered over.

To be clear: a watermark discourages misuse and makes a leak traceable, but it cannot make reuse physically impossible. Someone could still photograph a document. It is a sensible layer of protection, not a magic shield.