Personally identifiable information (PII), or sensitive personal information (SPI), as used in information security and privacy laws, is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the U.S. context, but the phrase it abbreviates has four common variants based on personal / personally, and identifiable / identifying. Not all are equivalent, and for legal purposes the effective definitions vary depending on the jurisdiction and the purposes for which the term is being used. (In other countries with privacy protection laws derived from the OECD privacy principles, the term used is more often "personal information '', which may be somewhat broader: in Australia 's Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) "personal information '' also includes information from which the person 's identity is "reasonably ascertainable '', potentially covering some information not covered by PII.)
pii is classified as what type of information
information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context