Philter User's Guide Help

Filters

A "filter" corresponds to a type of sensitive information. Philter has filters for sensitive information such as names, addresses, ages, and lots of others.

These are predefined filters that are ready to be used as well as custom filters that let you define your own Philter to identify sensitive information outside of what the predefined filters can identify. An example of a custom filter is a filter to identify your patient account numbers, where the structure of an account number is specific to your organization.

Each filter is capable of identifying and redacting a specific type of sensitive information. For example, there is a filter for phone numbers, a filter for US social security numbers, and a filter for person's names. You can enable any combination of these filters based on the types of sensitive information you need to redact.

This section of the documentation describes the filters available in Philter. The configuration options for each filter can vary due to the type of the sensitive information. For instance, only the zip code filter has a configuration to truncate the zip code.

A selection of filters and their configurations is called a policy. A policy describes how to de-identify a document.

Predefined Filters

Person's Names

Philter uses several methods to identify person's names.

Type

Description

First Names

Identifies common first names

Surnames

Identifies common surnames

Person's Names (NER)

Identifies full names using natural language processing analysis

Other Filters

Type

Description

Ages

Identifies ages such as 3.5 years old

Bitcoin Addresses

Identifies Bitcoin addresses such as 127NVqnjf8gB9BFAW2dnQeM6wqmy1gbGtv

Cities

Identifies common cities

Counties

Identifies common counties

Credit Card Numbers

Identifies VISA, American Express, MasterCard, and Discover credit card numbers.

Dates

Identifies dates in many formats such as May 22, 1999

Driver's License Numbers

Identifies driver's license numbers for all 50 US states

Email Addresses

Identifies email addresses

Hospitals and Hospital Abbreviations

Identifies common hospital names and their abbreviations

IBAN Codes

Identifies international bank account numbers

IP Addresses

Identifies IPv4 and IPv6 addresses

MAC Addresses

Identifies network MAC addresses

Passport Numbers

Identifies US passport numbers

Phone Numbers

Identifies phone numbers and phone number extensions

Sections

Identifies sections in text denoted by

SSNs and TINs

Identifies US SSNs and TINs

States and State Abbreviations

Identifies US state names and abbreviations

Tracking Numbers

Identifies UPS, FedEx, and USPS tracking numbers

URLs

Identifies URLs

VINs

Identifies vehicle identification numbers

Zip Codes

Identifies US zip codes

Custom Filter Types of Sensitive Information

In addition to the predefined types of sensitive information listed in the table above, you can also define your own types of sensitive information. Through custom identifiers and dictionaries, Philter can identify many other types of information that may be sensitive in your use-case. For example, if you have patient identifiers that follow a pattern of AA-00000 you can define a custom identifier for this sensitive information.

Philter can be configured to look identify sensitive information based on custom dictionaries. When a term in the dictionary is found in the text, Philter will treat the term as sensitive information and apply the given filter strategy.

Custom dictionaries support fuzziness to accommodate for misspellings. The replacement strategy for a custom dictionary has a sensitivityLevel that controls the amount of allowed fuzziness.

Type

Description

Custom Dictionaries

Identifies sensitive information based on dictionary values.

Custom Identifiers

Identifies custom alphanumeric identifiers that may be used for medical record numbers, patient identifiers, account number, or other specific identifier.

Last modified: 08 November 2023