Can not detect US/UK phone number as PII

Mohsin Khan 60 Reputation points
2025-05-19T08:12:35.0866667+00:00

Hey,

Greetings,

Below numbers are not detected as PII for US/UK . please suggest how should proceed ?

UK: +66 1234 567890
US: (123) 456-7890

Azure AI Language
Azure AI Language
An Azure service that provides natural language capabilities including sentiment analysis, entity extraction, and automated question answering.
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  1. SriLakshmi C 6,250 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-05-20T10:59:40.55+00:00

    Hello @Mohsin Khan,

    I understand that Azure AI Language’s PII detection may not be identifying certain entities such as Italian driver’s license numbers, VAT numbers, or even US/UK phone numbers due to limited locale coverage or formatting inconsistencies.

    Currently, enhanced PII detection is available primarily for specific locales like the US, UK, Canada, and India. For countries like Italy, detection for identifiers such as AB1234567 or IT12345678901 is not natively supported in the prebuilt models.

    Phone numbers may fail to be detected if they are not in recognized formats. For instance, a UK phone number using the country code +66 (which belongs to Thailand) may cause detection to fail, while US numbers should follow standard formats like (123) 456-7890 or +1 123-456-7890 for better accuracy.

    To address these, you can:

    Implement Custom Named Entity Recognition (NER) using Azure Language Studio to detect country-specific patterns.

    Apply regex-based filtering as a pre- or post-processing step to catch unsupported PII types.

    Ensure correct locale settings are used (e.g., "it-IT"), even though some locales have limited PII support.

    Submit feedback via Post idea · Community to help prioritize broader international PII coverage.

    Please refer this Category: Phone Number.

    I Hope this helps. Do let me know if you have any further queries.


    If this answers your query, please do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful.

    Thank you!

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