The US military has disabled advertising trackers on troops' phones and computers after reports that commercially available location data was used to target American forces in the Middle East. Senator Ron Wyden released letters from military branches on Friday confirming the changes, which address concerns that data brokers selling location information could allow adversaries to track deployed personnel, though Wyden said the military's efforts "have not been effective at neutralizing this threat".

The air force said it disabled advertising identifiers on devices two months ago, while Special Operations Command said it had "recently" done so on Windows devices; the army said mobile advertising IDs had been switched off since earlier this year, with Windows computers blocked "since before 2021". Wyden and Republican representative Pat Harrigan have asked the Pentagon to investigate whether the military properly addressed the risks, warning that adversaries "should not be able to pull out a credit card" to buy tracking data. A privacy expert welcomed the move but cautioned troops could still be tracked through other, more complex methods, such as combining device and network data.