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: Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Telecommunications (Interception and Access) 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
Personal phone number: Recorded Name: Avery Teston Date of birth: 14/02/1988 — Populated attribute field with a linked record field (85 tier)

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
Personal phone number: Name: Date of birth: — Empty form: the heading and field labels without values must not corroborate themselves (discovery only)
Policy guidance: this procedure explains how records about personal phone number are handled, who may access them and how long they are kept. It contains no records about any person or system. — Policy guidance naming the topic without any record (discovery only)
Personal phone number: Name: Avery Teston — Record with the attribute label but no value: the label must not corroborate itself (discovery only)

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.