Switzerland Passport Number

Detects Swiss passport numbers issued by fedpol (Federal Office of Police). Passports of the 2003, 2006 and 2010 series carry an eight-character number consisting of one uppercase letter followed by seven digits (e.g. E1234567); the 2010 series always begins with the letter X. The letters O and I are never used, to avoid confusion with the digits 0 and 1. The 2022 series (the only series issued since October 2022) has no published fixed structure — fedpol deliberately keeps the numbering rules non-public — so 2022-series numbers may not match this shape. Only the documented 2010-and-earlier format is covered.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: Medium confidence: one letter plus seven digits is a distinctive but not unique shape (order numbers, invoice references and Swiss identity-card numbers share it), so corroborating passport keywords are required on every tier. Case-sensitivity and the O/I exclusion further narrow the match surface.
Jurisdictions: ch
Regulations: FADP (Switzerland), Identity Documents Act (Switzerland, SR 143.1)
Frameworks: ISO 27001, ISO 27701
Data categories: pii, government-id
Scope: narrow
Risk rating: 8
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Compatible, Netskope: Compatible

Pattern

\b[A-HJ-NP-Z]\d{7}\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

passport, passport number, Reisepass, ID number, identification, ID card, license, permit, registration, certificate

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Passport no: X4720145 issued by fedpol, valid until 2032 — 2010-series number (X prefix) with passport label context
E1234567 — Format example published by the Canton of Bern identification-document guidance
Passnummer A7654321 (Schweizer Pass) — German-language passport label with letter-prefixed number

Should not match

O1234567 — Letter O is never used in Swiss passport numbers
I1234567 — Letter I is never used in Swiss passport numbers
X123456 — Only six digits after the letter — too short
X123456789 — Nine digits after the letter — too long
x1234567 — Lowercase letter — passport numbers are printed uppercase (pattern is case-sensitive)

Known false positives

Swiss identity-card numbers share the letter-plus-digits shape (eight or nine characters). Mitigation: Keyword evidence is passport-specific (Reisepass, passeport, passaporto); residual overlap is an acceptable same-sensitivity collision (both are Swiss identity documents).
Product codes, order references and ticket numbers of the form letter-plus-seven-digits. Mitigation: Every tier requires passport keywords within the 300-character proximity window; high and medium tiers additionally apply the template-exclusion NOT-group.
The 2022-series numbering rules are not published; 2022-series passports (issued since October 2022) may not follow the letter-plus-seven-digits shape and would then be missed (a coverage gap, not a false positive). Mitigation: Documented limitation — no authoritative 2022-series structure exists to author against, so only the documented 2010-and-earlier shape is matched. No checksum is published; structure plus keyword evidence is the strongest available gate.