Date of birth

Detects date-of-birth references in documents across multiple date formats (numeric slash, dot, hyphen, written month, ISO). Requires birth-record keywords in proximity to distinguish DOB from invoice dates, event dates, and other temporal references. No Microsoft built-in SIT exists for unstructured DOB detection.

Type

regex

Engine

boost_regex

Confidence

medium

Confidence justification

Medium confidence: date formats appear in every business document. Birth-record keywords are essential to distinguish DOB from the thousands of other dates in any corpus.

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PIPEDA

Frameworks

ISO 27001, ISO 27701, NIST CSF

Data categories

pii

Scope

wide

Risk rating

7

Platform compatibility

Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Compatible, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

\b(?:(?:0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[\/\-\.](?:0?[1-9]|1[012])[\/\-\.](?:19|20)\d{2}|(?:0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])(?:st|nd|rd|th)?\s+(?:Jan(?:uary)?|Feb(?:ruary)?|Mar(?:ch)?|Apr(?:il)?|May|Jun(?:e)?|Jul(?:y)?|Aug(?:ust)?|Sep(?:tember)?|Oct(?:ober)?|Nov(?:ember)?|Dec(?:ember)?)\s+(?:19|20)\d{2}|(?:19|20)\d{2}[\-\/](?:0[1-9]|1[012])[\-\/](?:0[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]))\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

DOB, date of birth, birth date, born, born on, birthday, d.o.b, d.o.b., address, age, citizenship, city, email, ethnicity, fax, first name, full name, gender, given name, last name (+14 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• DOB: 15/03/1990 — Numeric slash format with DOB label
• Date of birth: 03/15/1990 — US-style MM/DD/YYYY with label
• Born on 1st January 1985 — Written month format with ordinal
• Date of birth: 25.12.2000 — Dot-separated format
• Birth date: 1990-03-15 — ISO format

Should not match

• Invoice date: 15/03/2024 — Date in non-DOB financial context
• Due date: 01/01/2025 — Payment due date
• unrelated generic text — No date pattern present

Known false positives

• Non-DOB dates such as invoice dates, event dates, document timestamps, and meeting dates. Mitigation: Require birth-record keywords (DOB, date of birth, born) in proximity. Without these keywords the pattern fires at low confidence only.
• Historical dates in news articles or academic papers that happen to match the date format. Mitigation: Corroborative evidence keywords distinguish personal records from historical references.
• Dates in financial documents (settlement dates, maturity dates, filing dates). Mitigation: Filter excludes common business date labels via TextMatchFilter on the matched context.

References

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2153006/microsoft-purview-custom-sit-date-of-birth
• https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/personal-information-what-is-it/what-is-personal-data/