US military disables ad trackers on troops' phones
The US military has disabled advertising trackers on phones and computers used by service members, following concerns that location data sold by brokers could be used to target American forces abroad. Letters released by Senator Ron Wyden show the Air Force, Army, and Special Operations Command have restricted advertising identifiers on devices, with the Army blocking them on Windows computers since before 2021 and on mobile devices since at least February 2026. Lawmakers are pressing for an investigation into the broader risks of the location data trade.
US enemies 'should not be able to pull out a credit card and buy information that helps them track American troops'.
- tencentshill
It sounds like they disabled the "advertising ID" OS feature, but there are many other ways to fingerprint a device for advertising. Maybe this will lead to real privacy reform, now that the true risks are apparent. Not to mention ICE using the same data against civilians.
- cgannett
Oh boy, what an easy way to see if the phone's user is military or not.
- ferguess_k
Does it make sense to give the troops special phones instead of their own? I always find it weird that soldiers can take their own phones into the base.
- 9cb14c1ec0
Just throwing this link out into the void:
https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ad...
Wonder why it took the Pentagon so long to take the ads risk seriously.
- sorenKaram
Feels like this should have been done long ago. Like I would just assume that ad tracking (any kind of tracking) for military is always gonna be a bad idea.