1. Why Banks Password-Protect E-Statements
Financial institutions across Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the wider GCC routinely encrypt monthly e-statements sent via email. Standard email protocols (SMTP) do not guarantee end-to-end encryption across intermediate mail servers. To protect sensitive customer information—including account numbers, IBANs, transaction history, and residential addresses—banks encrypt the PDF using standard document passwords.
2. Common Password Structures Used by Regional Banks
While each bank determines its own formula, GCC institutions typically construct statement passwords from one of several personal identifiers already on file:
- Date of Birth (DDMMYYYY): An 8-digit string representing your birth date (for example,
05111990for November 5, 1990). Remember to include leading zeros for single-digit days and months. - National ID / Civil ID / Iqama Number: Your government-issued identification number (such as Qatar ID, Emirates ID, or Saudi Iqama/National ID), either in full or the last several digits.
- Primary Debit Card Digits: The first or last 4 to 6 digits of the active debit card associated with your primary current or savings account.
If your bank prompts for a date of birth and your account was registered in Saudi Arabia, check whether your profile is registered under the Hijri or Gregorian calendar, as entering a Gregorian date on a Hijri-registered account will fail to unlock the document.
3. The Direct Alternative: Download Unencrypted Statements
If you do not wish to deal with PDF passwords, nearly all GCC banks allow you to export unencrypted statements directly from their authenticated online portals:
- Sign in to your bank’s official mobile banking app or web portal.
- Navigate to your account details and select Statements or Documents.
- Choose your desired date range and download the statement directly. Statements downloaded from an authenticated session are typically unencrypted PDFs or CSV files.
4. How MyFulus Handles Password-Protected Statements
If you upload an encrypted PDF to MyFulus along with its statement password:
- The password is held in ephemeral server memory only for the duration of the text extraction.
- The password is never written to disk, never stored in the database, and never recorded in server logs.
- Once text extraction finishes, the password is immediately discarded from memory.