US Military Services Disable Advertising Trackers After Pentagon Warned Commercial Location Data Exposes Troop Positions

The U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command have all disabled advertising-ID tracking on government-issued phones and computers, according to letters the services sent Senator Ron Wyden and released Friday 12. The Air Force disabled the identifiers on all devices roughly two months ago (in July), Special Operations Command said it "recently" did so on Windows machines, and the Army told Reuters mobile-device IDs had been off since earlier this year while Windows computers had been blocked "since before 2021" 2. Wyden and Representative Pat Harrigan sent a follow-up letter Friday asking the Pentagon to investigate whether the military has adequately countered the location-data threat, and Wyden stated the effort "have not been effective at neutralizing this threat" 2. The disclosures follow Reuters reporting that commercially available location data was used to target U.S. forces in the Middle East, and a separate July Reuters report that some deployed personnel may be ordered to surrender phones over concerns that posted videos were helping identify base locations 23.