German Passport Number

Detects German passport number patterns. This pattern is based on a Microsoft Purview built-in sensitive information type. Users already running Purview may prefer to enable the built-in SIT directly, or use this version as a starting point for customisation.

Type

regex

Engine

universal

Confidence

medium

Confidence justification

Medium confidence: pattern has structural constraints but corroborative keywords are recommended to reduce false positive rates. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.

Detection quality

Verified

Jurisdictions

de, eu

Regulations

BDSG, CNIL / LIL, GDPR

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[CFGHJK][A-Z0-9]{8}\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

passport, travel document, passport number, ID number, identification, ID card, license, permit, registration, certificate, data record, database record, record set, data extract, data export, database table, spreadsheet, data registry, registry entry, master data (+13 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• C12345678 — Starts with C followed by 8 alphanumeric characters
• F9K7X2M4P — Starts with F followed by 8 alphanumeric characters
• G1A2B3C4D — Starts with G followed by 8 alphanumeric characters

Should not match

• A12345678 — Starts with A which is not a valid prefix
• C1234567 — Only 7 characters after prefix is too short
• template example placeholder record identifier — Template/sample context should be excluded even when anchor words are present

Known false positives

• Generic alphanumeric sequences matching passport format in unrelated contexts. Mitigation: Require corroborative evidence keywords within the proximity window.

References

• German passport number entity definition - Microsoft Learn