detector makes detecting data containing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) quick, easy, and scalable. It provides high-level functions that can take vectors and data.frames and return important summary statistics in a convenient data.frame. Once complete, detector will be able to detect the following types of PII:

Full name
Home address
E-mail address
National identification number
Passport number
Social Security number
IP address
Vehicle registration plate number
Driver's license number
Credit card number
Date of birth
Birthplace
Telephone number
Latitude and longtiude

State of the Union

Complete!

E-mail address
Telephone number
National identification number

Needs more work...

Credit card number

Haven't even started :(

Full name
Date of birth
Home address
IP address
Vehicle registration plate number
Driver's license number
Birthplace
Latitude and longtiude

Installation

You can install the latest development version from CRAN:

install.packages("detector")

Or from GitHub with:

if (packageVersion("devtools") < 1.6) {
  install.packages("devtools")
}
devtools::install_github("paulhendricks/detector")

If you encounter a clear bug, please file a minimal reproducible example on GitHub.

API

Generate data containing fake PII

library(dplyr, warn.conflicts = FALSE)
library(generator)
n <- 6
set.seed(1)
ashley_madison <-
  data.frame(name = r_full_names(n),
             snn = r_national_identification_numbers(n),
             dob = r_date_of_births(n),
             email = r_email_addresses(n),
             ip = r_ipv4_addresses(n),
             phone = r_phone_numbers(n),
             credit_card = r_credit_card_numbers(n),
             lat = r_latitudes(n),
             lon = r_longitudes(n),
             stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
knitr::kable(ashley_madison, format = "markdown")

name	snn	dob	email	ip	phone	credit_card	lat	lon
Eldridge Pfannerstill	442-34-5338	1993-04-28	ntakqojv@lgbcyk.rkv	45.84.71.225	6794976958	4125-7204-9193-5140	-2.7018575	8.634988
Augustine Homenick	799-44-6396	1912-09-08	iqg@mtcuh.viy	191.116.55.106	3275827694	2182-5994-2283-9486	-70.4148630	-65.827918
Jennie Runte	941-11-5441	1985-01-12	wjszy@sjhreocvt.gbp	27.128.73.17	7419351735	4370-4866-4735-7857	-45.4091701	-79.932229
Araceli Kunde	290-44-2675	1948-04-28	uljsnvhfr@qfdkumtn.jkd	221.47.229.86	3243246285	6682-5074-2898-9396	-0.2673845	103.514583
Josue Rau	686-88-8446	1996-06-14	c@lqxzkdpi.nfy	157.136.114.185	9169736873	4510-3757-4858-5236	-22.8839925	72.886505
Elnora Zemlak	212-40-7016	1976-01-09	capvnl@nympzf.gsk	143.20.199.87	3295843196	7206-6205-2194-6432	78.2444466	-120.590050

Detect data containing PII

library(detector)
ashley_madison %>%
  detect %>%
  knitr::kable(format = "markdown")

column_name	has_email_addresses	has_phone_numbers	has_national_identification_numbers
name	FALSE	FALSE	FALSE
snn	FALSE	FALSE	TRUE
dob	FALSE	FALSE	FALSE
email	TRUE	FALSE	FALSE
ip	FALSE	FALSE	FALSE
phone	FALSE	TRUE	FALSE
credit_card	FALSE	FALSE	FALSE
lat	FALSE	TRUE	FALSE
lon	FALSE	TRUE	FALSE

Citation

To cite package ‘detector’ in publications use:

Paul Hendricks (2015). detector: Detect Data Containing Personally Identifiable Information. R package version 0.1.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=detector

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

@Manual{,
  title = {detector: Detect Data Containing Personally Identifiable Information},
  author = {Paul Hendricks},
  year = {2015},
  note = {R package version 0.1.0},
  url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=detector},
}