US military disables ad trackers after troops targeted in Middle East

Multiple branches of the U.S. military have disabled advertising trackers on government-issued phones and computers after foreign adversaries exploited commercially available location data to target American forces in the Middle East, according to letters released Friday by Senator Ron Wyden and reporting by Reuters.reuters

The Air Force told Wyden it disabled advertising identifiers on computers and mobile phones about two months ago, while U.S. Special Operations Command said in a separate letter that it had "recently" disabled them on its Windows devices. The Army said advertising identifiers on Android and Apple ↘ 2.51% mobile devices had been disabled by default "since at least February 2026," though identifiers on Windows computers had been blocked "since before 2021".english.nv+2

A Long-Known Vulnerability

The disclosures follow months of pressure from Wyden and other lawmakers. In May, a bipartisan group of 14 members of Congress warned the Pentagon that it "has not taken basic steps to protect U.S. military personnel from the serious counterintelligence and force protection threat posed by the collection and sale of personal information". In a letter accompanying that warning, U.S. Central Command confirmed it had "received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater".techcrunch+2

Location data is routinely collected from phone apps through online advertising systems and funneled to data brokers, who sell it on the open market. Disabling a device's advertising identifier makes it far harder to single out an individual, as their data blends with that of other users who have also turned off the feature.techcrunch

Years of Warnings

The vulnerability has been documented for nearly a decade. In 2018, The Guardian reported that data from the fitness app Strava could reveal secret U.S. military bases. In 2021, The Wall Street Journal News Corp ↘ 2.36% reported that a military contractor discovered it could track operations through soldiers' app data. And in 2024, Wired showed how commercially available data could place military contractors at sensitive locations in Germany.gizmodo

Wyden told Reuters in May that it was "time to start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat". The letters from the Navy and Marine Corps also confirmed that advertising identifiers had been disabled on military devices, though neither specified when the changes took effect.timesofisrael+2

What Comes Next

The measures address only government-issued devices. Lawmakers have also urged the Pentagon to require personnel to disable advertising identifiers on personal phones brought overseas or onto military facilities, and to replace standard web browsers with privacy-focused alternatives that block tracking by default. Whether the Department of Defense will adopt those broader recommendations remains to be seen.nextgov