Why does my PII detection tool miss names and IDs in German, French, and Polish documents?

Most PII tools are English-centric — a German Steuer-ID (11 digits with checksum), French NIR (15 digits), or Polish PESEL have unique formats that generic regex patterns miss entirely. anonym.legal uses a three-tier detection stack: spaCy language-native models for 25 high-resource European languages, Stanza for 7 additional languages, and XLM-RoBERTa cross-lingual transformers for 16 lower-resource languages. With 285+ entity types including DACH, Nordic, and Eastern European identifiers, GDPR-compliant detection works across all EU member states.

Our tool detects US SSNs but misses German Steuer-IDs, French NIRs, and Swedish Personnummer — how do we get complete EU coverage?

anonym.legal provides 285+ entity types including country-specific identifiers: German Steuer-ID (11-digit with checksum), French NIR (15-digit with gender indicator), Swedish Personnummer (10-digit with century indicator), UK NI/NHS numbers, Dutch BSN, Polish PESEL, and many more. Each identifier has format-specific validation and checksum algorithms built in. Vanilla Presidio detects only ~55 entity types — anonym.legal extends this by 5x with region-specific recognizers.

Presidio only detects about 55 entity types — we need European tax IDs, IBANs, and German registration numbers. Are there comprehensive libraries?

anonym.legal extends Presidio's ~55 default entity types to 285+ with comprehensive regional coverage: DACH tax and registration IDs, all EU IBAN formats, Nordic personnummers, UK NHS/NI numbers, APAC national IDs, Latin American CPFs and CUILs, and financial identifiers (SWIFT, crypto wallets). All recognizers include format validation and checksum verification where applicable.

By George Curta · Last updated 2026-04-072026-04-07

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PII Detection: 285+ Entity Types

Our regex-based detection engine identifies over 285 types of personal information with pattern-based precision. Same input, same output - every time.

Try It Free Full Entity Reference

How Detection Works

Pattern Matching

Uses carefully crafted regex patterns for each entity type, ensuring consistent and predictable results across all documents.

Confidence Scoring

Each detection includes a confidence score (0-1) based on pattern strength and context, helping you filter results.

Context Awareness

Surrounding text context improves detection accuracy, reducing false positives while catching edge cases.

Supported Entity Types

Comprehensive coverage of personal information types across categories

Personal Identifiers

Person Names
Email Addresses
Phone Numbers
Date of Birth
Age
Gender
Nationality

Financial Information

Credit Card Numbers
IBAN
BIC/SWIFT
Bank Account Numbers
Tax IDs
VAT Numbers

Government IDs

Social Security Numbers (SSN)
National ID Numbers
Passport Numbers
Driver's License
Health Insurance IDs

Location Data

Street Addresses
Cities
ZIP/Postal Codes
Countries
GPS Coordinates

Digital Identifiers

IP Addresses (v4/v6)
MAC Addresses
URLs
Domain Names
User IDs

Organization Data

Company Names
Organization IDs
Registration Numbers
Department Names

Temporal Data

Dates
Times
Date Ranges
Timestamps

International Formats

German ID (Personalausweis)
UK National Insurance
Spanish DNI/NIE
Italian Codice Fiscale
And 20+ more country-specific formats

Custom Entity Support

Need to detect custom patterns? Create your own entity types with regex patterns or use our AI-assisted pattern generator.

Manual Pattern Creation

Define regex patterns for proprietary identifiers like internal employee IDs, project codes, or custom reference numbers.

AI Pattern Generator

Describe what you want to detect in plain language, and our AI generates optimized regex patterns for you.

Learn about AI Entity Creation →

Start Detecting PII Today

Try our detection engine free with 200 tokens per cycle. No credit card required.

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About this page

We update this page when our platform or the law changes.

Read our founder note for how we work.

Each change shows up in the timestamp at the top.

We follow these rules

GDPR (EU 2016/679).
ISO/IEC 27001:2022.
NIS2 (EU 2022/2555).
HIPAA safe harbor under 45 CFR § 164.514(b)(2).

Our promise

We do not sell your data.

We do not train models on your text.

We store your files in Germany.

You can delete your account at any time.

You own your work.

Where we run

Our servers live in Falkenstein, Germany.

We use Hetzner. They hold ISO 27001 certification.

All data stays in the EU.

Backups run every day.

Need help?

Email support@anonym.legal.

We reply within one business day.

How we test

We run a full check suite on every release.

Each surface gets its own sweep script and report.

Human reviewers spot-check the output each week.

We track recall and precision on a labelled set.

Bad runs block the deploy.

What we never do

We never sell your information to third parties.
We never train models on what you upload.
We never keep your work after you delete it.
We never share keys with any outside firm.
We never run ads inside the product.

Plans in plain words

We sell credits, not seats.

One credit covers one short job.

Long jobs use a few credits each.

You can top up at any time.

Unused credits roll over each month.

Read the plans page for current rates.

Who built this

A small team of engineers and lawyers built this.

We ship from Europe and work in the open.

Our founder note spells out why we started.

Where to start

How the parts fit

A browser add-on cleans text inside Chrome.

A Word plug-in handles drafts in Office.

A small desktop tool works on whole folders.

An agent protocol link feeds large models safely.

All four share one core engine and one rule set.

Words from our team

We started this work after a lunch about cookies.

One friend kept getting odd ads on her phone.

We asked why a court file leaked through a draft.

We sketched the first build on a napkin that week.

By month three we had a tiny demo for a friend.

She used it on her first case the next day.

Common questions we hear

Can the tool read scanned PDFs? Yes, with OCR.

Does it work on long files? Yes, in small chunks.

Can I roll my own rule set? Yes, save it as a preset.

Does it run offline? The desktop build runs offline.

Do you keep my files? No, the cloud build wipes after each run.

Will it learn from my work? No, we never train on inputs.

A short tour of the workflow

Upload a file or paste a snippet of prose.

Pick the entities you want gone from the draft.

Choose a method: replace, mask, hash, encrypt, or redact.

Press run and watch the side panel show each hit.

Skim the result and tweak any rule that misfired.

Save the cleaned file or send it to a teammate.