German Phone Number

Detects German mobile telephone numbers per the Bundesnetzagentur's (BNetzA) Nummernplan für Mobile Dienste: the (0)15, (0)16, and (0)17 mobile sub-ranges, in both the domestic (leading trunk "0") and international (+49, leading 0 dropped) forms. BNetzA's own published length table shows the national significant number (the digits after the leading 0, including the "1" of "15/16/17") is 10 digits for most 016x/017x allocations and 11 digits for the 015x range and the 1609/176 exceptions — every quantifier below is bounded to this documented 10-11 digit span rather than left open-ended. The 10-11 bound is applied as a single envelope across all three ranges (the regex cannot pin 015x to exactly 11 and non-exception 016x/017x to exactly 10 without per-sub-range length alternation), so a 10-digit 015x or an 11-digit non-exception 016x/017x rendering is accepted — a deliberate, documented over-acceptance kept small by the envelope itself. Beyond the DIN 5008:2020 space-grouped form, two widespread legacy DIN 5008 renderings of the mobile prefix are covered: the slash form "0171/3920045" and the parenthesised form "(0171) 3920045" — both deprecated by the current DIN 5008 (which prescribes plain space grouping) but still common in signatures and letterheads — plus the "+49 (0)171 ..." letterhead form (nonstandard per ITU-T E.123, but ubiquitous). Geographic (Ortsnetz) landline numbers are intentionally out of scope (so the landline renderings "030/12345678" and "(030) 12345678" are likewise not matched): BNetzA states area codes run 2-5 digits and new allocations are capped at 11 significant digits (10 for the Berlin/Hamburg/Frankfurt/Munich two-digit-code exception), but does not publish a verified minimum length for the existing stock of legacy numbers, so a low-end bound would be invented rather than sourced — mirroring in-phone-number's decision to scope out India's similarly under-specified STD/landline numbers.

Type: regex
Engine: universal
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: Medium confidence: the 01[5-7] mobile-family leading digits and the 10-11 digit length bound (drawn directly from BNetzA's published Rufnummernblock length table) narrow the format, but German mobile numbers carry no checksum and a 10-11 digit sequence with those leading digits is still a high digit-collision format. Per the phone-family convention (every tier requires positive corroborative evidence; a +CC prefix alone is insufficient gating; there is no 65 rung), both the domestic and +49 international sub-regexes are evidence-gated at every tier: 75 requires generic phone-context evidence and 85 requires country-specific phone keywords with template/noise exclusion. The literal +49 prefix improves precision when present but is not by itself sufficient gating.
Jurisdictions: de
Regulations: GDPR
Frameworks: ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2
Data categories: pii, contact-information
Scope: narrow
Risk rating: 5
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Unsupported, Macie: Unsupported, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Unsupported, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?<!\d)(?:\+49[\s.-]?(?:\(0\)[\s.-]?)?1[5-7][\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d(?:[\s.-]?\d)?|0[\s.-]?1[5-7][\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d[\s.-]?\d(?:[\s.-]?\d)?|01[5-7]\d\s?/\s?\d(?:[\s.-]?\d){6,7}|\(01[5-7]\d\)[\s.-]?\d(?:[\s.-]?\d){6,7})(?!\d)

Corroborative evidence keywords

phone, mobile, call, text, contact number, German phone number, Telefonnummer, call me at, cell, telephone, tel, dial, text me, text message, [object Object], WhatsApp, voicemail, phone number, mobile number, landline (+8 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Vodafone: 0152 28817386 — BNetzA-reserved "drama number" (Mitteilung 148/2021), Vodafone 0152 mobile range, space-separated
Rufnummer: 0172 9925904 — BNetzA-reserved drama number, 0172 mobile range
Call the office mobile 0171-3920045 — BNetzA-reserved Deutsche Telekom drama number block (0171 3920000-3920099), hyphenated
International contact: +49 152 28817386 — International +49 form of the Vodafone drama number, leading 0 dropped
Durchwahl: 0152/28817386 — Legacy DIN 5008 slash rendering of the Vodafone drama number (deprecated by DIN 5008:2020 but still widespread)
Handy: (0171) 3920045 — Legacy parenthesised-prefix rendering of the Deutsche Telekom drama number
Briefkopf: +49 (0)152 28817386 — Widespread "+CC (0)" letterhead rendering — nonstandard per E.123 but common on German letterheads

Should not match

030 23125678 — BNetzA-reserved Berlin landline drama number — geographic (Ortsnetz) numbers are out of scope for this mobile-only pattern
0180 5123456 — 0180 is a special-rate service prefix, not a 015/016/017 mobile range — third digit 8 is excluded
0152 2881 — Only 4 digits after the 0152 mobile prefix, far short of the required 8-9
90152288173869999 — Valid-shaped mobile digit run embedded inside a longer reference number, rejected by digit boundaries
030/12345678 — DIN legacy slash rendering of a Berlin landline — geographic numbers stay out of scope, slash or not
(030) 12345678 — Parenthesised rendering of a Berlin landline — geographic numbers stay out of scope
Termin am 01/07/2026 um 15:30 — Date written with slashes — the slash branch requires a 4-digit 015/016/017 mobile prefix and 7-8 subscriber digits
Az. 0152/2020 — File/case-reference notation — only four digits after the slash, far short of the required 7-8

Known false positives

A 10-11 digit sequence with the 01[5-7] mobile leading-digit shape can still coincidentally match invoice numbers, order numbers, or other structured identifiers of similar length and leading-digit distribution. Mitigation: Every tier — for both the domestic and +49 international sub-regexes — requires positive phone-context or country-specific evidence within 300 characters; no zero-evidence tier exists, so a bare digit run without corroborating context never fires at any confidence level.
Geographic (Ortsnetz) landline numbers are not detected at all (a false negative, not a false positive, but noted for completeness): BNetzA documents a 2-5 digit area code and an 11-digit cap for new allocations (10 for the Berlin/Hamburg/Frankfurt/Munich exception), but publishes no verified minimum length across the existing stock, so bounding a landline regex would mean inventing a lower bound rather than sourcing it. Mitigation: A future revision could add landline coverage if a genuinely verifiable minimum-length constraint is confirmed from a primary BNetzA source, following the same verification bar applied here.