Though the overall lesson of the story is good: analog redactions with a permanent market and a b&w photocopier are recommended for anybody without 100% confidence in their tools.
Most banknotes are not printed on ordinary paper, but it doesn't stop people from trying. Printers which produce those dots will also usually refuse to print high-resolution pictures of dollar bills.
Or better yet, an exacto blade. If the "black and white" photocopier is actually grayscale, then you could get text leaking through the marker if you play around with the image contrast.
Quite a lot of cars in Europe, including from European marquees, have the VIN in a visible place at the bottom of the windshield.
I can also look up the VIN for pretty much any car on the road by just searching the number plate on the traffic authority's website. Gives me the VIN, last inspection date, tyre sizes, tax info, etc.
When they take possession of items for various reasons they want to sell them off to reclaim lost tax revenue.
Cars for example, now you must know that in Europe for some reason people are very weary of their VIN. It's not shown on websites as it is in the USA.
So the tax office posts a PDF with all the cars they possessed with their VINs, but with 80% blacked out.
With black boxes.
And they didn't flatten the PDF.
Sending around data is a minefield. Metadata everywhere. It's so easy to lose track of it.