Sherlock.PII

Social Security Numbers (SSN)

• Regex Pattern: r'\b\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}\b'
• How it works:
• \b: This is a "word boundary." It ensures that we are matching a whole word or number, preventing it from finding an SSN inside a longer string of digits.
• \d{3}: Looks for exactly three digits (\d means any digit, {3} means three of them).
• : Matches the literal hyphen character.
• \d{2}: Looks for exactly two digits.
• : Matches the second hyphen.
• \d{4}: Looks for exactly four digits.
• \b: Another word boundary to mark the end.

This pattern specifically targets the classic XXX-XX-XXXX format for Social Security Numbers.

Dates of Birth (DOB)

• Regex Pattern: r'\b(0[1-9]|1[0-2])[-/](0[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01])[-/](\d{4}|\d{2})\b'
• How it works:
• (0[1-9]|1[0-2]): This part looks for the month. It matches a 0 followed by a digit from 1 to 9 (for 01 to 09) OR a 1 followed by a digit from 0 to 2 (for 10, 11, 12).
• [-/]: Matches either a hyphen or a forward slash as the separator.
• (0[1-9]|[12]\d|3[01]): This handles the day. It looks for a 0 followed by 1-9 OR a 1 or 2 followed by any digit OR a 3 followed by a 0 or 1. This covers days from 01 to 31.
• [-/]: Matches the second separator.
• (\d{4}|\d{2}): This finds the year, matching either a four-digit year or a two-digit year.

This regex is flexible enough to find dates like MM-DD-YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY, MM-DD-YY, and MM/DD/YY.

Emails

• Regex Pattern: r'\b[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z|a-z]{2,}\b'
• How it works:
• [A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+: This matches the username part of the email. It allows one or more (+) uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and the special characters ._%+-.
• @: Matches the literal "@" symbol.
• [A-Za-z0-9.-]+: This matches the domain name (like "gmail" or "yahoo"). It allows one or more letters, numbers, dots, and hyphens.
• \.: Matches the literal dot before the top-level domain (like ".com").
• [A-Z|a-z]{2,}: This looks for the top-level domain (TLD). It requires at least two ({2,}) uppercase or lowercase letters.

This pattern effectively finds most standard email address formats.