Sen. Ron Wyden released letters showing the U.S. military has disabled
advertising identifiers on multiple computers and mobile phones after reports
that commercially available location data were used to locate U.S. forces in the
Middle East. The Air Force told Wyden it turned off ad identifiers on desktops
and mobiles two months ago; U.S. Special Operations Command said it "recently"
disabled ad identifiers on Windows devices and had disabled mobile ad IDs
earlier this year. The disclosures underscore a national-security risk from
ad-industry location collection and data brokers aggregating and reselling data
that can be used to track deployed personnel.
