Personal phone number

Identifies documents containing references to personal phone number in Australian contexts. This information type is classified as personally identifiable information under applicable data protection regulations. Phrase-level concept detector: it matches contact-number wording, not telephone digits. Enforcing tiers require a personal/home qualifier (personal phone number, home phone, personal mobile, call-back number, phone contact). Bare mobile/cell/telephone/contact/SMS/direct-dial labels without that qualifier are discovery-only.

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

Topic false positive

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

AML/CTF Act (Cth), HRIPA (Cth), IPA 2009 (Qld), My Health Records Act 2012 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), TIA Act 1979 (Cth), GDPR

Frameworks

ISO 27001, ISO 27701

Data categories

pii

Scope

wide

Risk rating

3

Platform compatibility

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

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:personal\s+phone\s+number|home\s+phone|phone\s+contact|call\s+back\s+number|personal\s+mobile)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

personal phone number, personal, phone, number, contact, location, data, mobile, mob, cell, telephone, tel, ph, landline, home phone, work phone, business phone, direct line, contact number, phone number (+39 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• personal phone number — Primary personal-qualified topic phrase match (enforce-eligible)
• home phone — Home-qualified phone label (enforce-eligible)
• personal mobile — Personal-qualified mobile label (enforce-eligible)
• call back number — Call-back number label (enforce-eligible)
• mobile number — Bare mobile label still matches discovery-only generic branch
• telephone number — Bare telephone label still matches discovery-only generic branch

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
• Corporate switchboard telephone number. — Corporate switchboard decoy — generic telephone label must not reach the enforcing personal-phone tiers
• Shared service desk contact number for IT support. — Shared service-desk decoy — generic contact label must not reach the enforcing personal-phone tiers
• Staff directory mobile number for the service desk. — Bare mobile number without personal/home qualifier must not reach enforcing personal-phone tiers
• Handset cell number printed on the asset tag. — Bare cell number without personal qualifier must not reach enforcing personal-phone tiers

Known false positives

• Common words and phrases related to personal phone number 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 Australian English, 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://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/your-personal-information/what-is-personal-information
• https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/your-personal-information/what-is-sensitive-information
• https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principles-guidelines
• https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/check-a-vehicle-registration
• https://www.gsma.com/get-involved/working-groups/terminal-steering-group/imei-database/
• https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.118.1/en