US military branches have taken steps to disable advertising trackers on service phones and computers after growing concern that commercial location data could be used to monitor deployed personnel.
The changes became public through letters released by Senator Ron Wyden and statements the branches gave to Reuters. According to the reporting, the Air Force told Wyden it disabled advertising identifiers on computers and mobile phones two months ago. US Special Operations Command said it had recently disabled them on its Windows devices. The Army said advertising IDs tied to mobile devices had been disabled earlier this year. Wyden and Representative Pat Harrigan also sent a letter to the Pentagon asking for an investigation into whether the military had done enough to address the risk.
The issue is not theoretical. The Guardian report says lawmakers are responding to reports that commercially available location data had been used to target US troops in the Middle East. That reflects a broader national security problem with mobile advertising identifiers, often shortened to MAID. These are unique device-linked IDs that can be used to track app activity and infer or pinpoint a person’s physical location when combined with other data.
Military officials appear to be acting branch by branch rather than through a single, uniform public policy announcement. The Army said Windows computers had had advertising IDs blocked since before 2021, while Android and Apple mobile devices had only had the setting disabled by default since at least February 2026. Similar letters from the Army and Navy to Wyden said they had disabled advertising IDs on military devices, although those letters did not make clear exactly when the restrictions took effect. The Navy did not respond to requests for comment.
The disclosures also arrive as the military considers stricter rules on phone use more generally. Reuters reported in July that some deployed personnel in the Middle East could be ordered to surrender their phones because videos and other content posted online might help Iran target American bases. In other words, the ad-tracker changes are part of a broader effort to reduce the digital exhaust that service members generate simply by carrying modern devices.
Wyden said in a statement that the military’s efforts had not been effective enough at neutralizing the threat. Harrigan said adversaries should not be able to buy information that helps them track American troops. The Pentagon said it would respond directly to the lawmakers.
Privacy experts quoted in the report say disabling MAID on military devices is a useful step, but not a complete solution. Zach Edwards, co-founder of DecryptAds, said it should keep location data out of bulk sales by many vendors. He also warned that personnel could still be tracked through more complicated routes, including combinations of network data, device details and app-level information.
That caveat is important. Commercial tracking ecosystems are built from many overlapping signals, not just one identifier. Turning off a single ID can reduce risk substantially, but it does not automatically end exposure if other data sources still leak where a device is and how it behaves.
For the military, the disclosures suggest a practical lesson: phones and laptops are now operational-security issues as much as communications tools. When advertising systems can help outsiders identify where service members are, device privacy stops being a consumer feature and becomes a force-protection measure. The branches appear to have responded, but the public letters show the concern is still evolving and the policy response is still uneven.
