Mailing address

Identifies documents containing references to mailing address in international contexts. This information type is classified as personally identifiable information under applicable data protection regulations.

Type

regex

Engine

boost_regex

Confidence

medium

Confidence justification

category-aware structural regex with anchor and context constraints replaces phrase-only detection. Added context gating and exclusion rules improve precision and reduce incidental matches.

Detection quality

Mixed

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

GDPR

Data categories

pii

Scope

wide

Platform compatibility

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

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:mailing\s+address|postal\s+address|correspondence\s+address|delivery\s+address|mail\s+to|send\s+to|shipping\s+address|PO\s+Box|post\s+office\s+box|forwarding\s+address|mail\s+recipient)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

mailing address, mailing, address, contact, location, data, age, birthday, citizenship, city, date of birth, DOB, email, ethnicity, fax, first name, full name, gender, given name, last name (+43 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• mailing address — Primary topic phrase match
• postal address — Case-insensitive topic phrase match
• correspondence address — Alternative topic phrase match
• delivery address — Additional topic phrase match

Should not match

• unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present
• placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match topic-specific regex
• address mac — Generic word pair from old broad template should not match

Known false positives

• Common words and phrases related to mailing address appearing in policy documents, training materials, HR templates, or compliance guidelines without actual personal data. Mitigation: Require corroborative evidence keywords within the proximity window to confirm sensitive data context rather than general discussion.
• In English (as the primary international business language), similar terminology used in formal or administrative contexts (education, professional documentation) that does not constitute sensitive data collection. Mitigation: Layer with additional contextual signals such as structured identifiers, form fields, or database column headers to distinguish sensitive records from general references.
• High-frequency pattern matches in large document corpora due to broad regex anchors. Expected match rate is significantly higher than specific identifier patterns. Mitigation: Tune confidence thresholds for bulk scanning. Consider using this pattern primarily as a pre-filter with secondary validation.

References

• https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj
• https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/your-personal-information/what-is-personal-information