Personal email address

Identifies documents containing references to personal email address in Australian contexts. This information type is classified as personally identifiable information under applicable data protection regulations. Phrase-level concept detector: it matches email-label wording, not populated mailbox addresses; generic email/contact/correspondence labels without a personal or private 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+email\s+address|personal\s+email|private\s+email|email\s+contact|email\s+address|correspondence\s+email|contact\s+email)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

personal email address, personal, email, address, contact, location, data, age, birthday, citizenship, city, date of birth, [object Object], ethnicity, fax, first name, full name, gender, given name, last name (+53 more)

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• personal email address — Primary topic phrase match
• personal email — Case-insensitive topic phrase match
• private email — Alternative topic phrase match
• email contact — 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
• Support contact email for the company. — Role-mailbox decoy — a business support label must not reach the enforcing personal-email tiers
• Sales team shared inbox email address for correspondence. — Shared-inbox decoy — corporate email-address label must not reach the enforcing personal-email tiers

Known false positives

• Common words and phrases related to personal email 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 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