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: Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (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
Personal email address: 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
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
Personal email address: 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 email address 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 email address: 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 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.