Yahoo News reported on September 8th that U.S. Senator Ron Wyden recently disclosed the responses of various military branches to his inquiries. This revealed that even if government devices have been set to disable ad tracking functions, the location data of U.S. military personnel may still be leaked through commercial channels, posing a continuous security threat.
In May 2026, Wyden and another senator, Pat Harris, wrote to departments such as the Department of Defense, informing them that foreign forces were using commercial location data to target US military soldiers.
According to Reuters, Wieden said in a statement that the military's measures “clearly have not been effective in eliminating this threat.” Harrigan pointed out that American enemies should not be able to simply pull out their credit cards and purchase information that helps track the locations of US soldiers.
Currently, Weidong has shared the responses he received from the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command. All these military branches have disabled ad tracking on the government-provided equipment they use, including Apple and Android smartphones, as well as Windows computers. Some of these branches completed this process earlier this year, while the Air Force is said to have finished the work by July 2026.
Advertising tracking functions are typically implemented using a Mobile Advertising ID (MAID). This identifier is associated with the device and allows for tracking of user activities across applications, as well as precise location determination.
For example, in 2024, a joint survey by the American magazine Wired, the German Bavarian Broadcasting Company, and "Netpol" media organizations revealed that Florida-based data brokerage company Datastream Group sold high-precision location data on mobile devices near German military bases, including locations where nuclear weapons are believed to be stored. The total number of coordinates involved amounted to 3.6 billion pieces. It is reported that at least 13 particularly sensitive military and intelligence sites could be located using this data.
And the example of the sports social app “Strava” directly revealing running trajectory data is well-known.
Sky News investigations revealed that a Strava account associated with a U.S. Navy contractor regularly recorded running trajectories around military bases about a week before the conflict began. Two days after its activity ceased, the account reappeared, recording runs around the courtyard of the Crown Holiday Hotel, which was attacked by Iran six days later. It is reported that two Pentagon employees were injured in the attack.
Not only that, Strava also collects up to 21 types of information about users and shares some of this data with advertisers. Therefore, it has become another source of advertising tracking leaks.
Although Wyden expressed praise for the Department of Defense's measures, he also pointed out that these are not enough. Further actions must be taken to protect US troops stationed abroad.
Hauden and Harigen said: "We commend the military for implementing this network security defense on government equipment. However, recent reports that Defense Ministry facilities are still leaking commercial data, have raised unsettling questions."
Obviously, even if the US military has disabled these functions and kept their personnel out of the reach of ‘data brokers’, the data that has already been collected can still be sold, and still poses a risk.
According to Sky News, similar incidents occurred near the Muwaafaq Salty Air Base in Jordan. Previously, U.S. military personnel regularly recorded their usual jogging routes. After a pause in March, the activity resumed in April, with records showing them running around the barracks on the western side of the base. Even after the Department of Defense disabled advertising tracking, the base was still attacked on July 17th. Official data indicates that this attack resulted in the death of three U.S. soldiers.
Senators believe that there could be several reasons for the continuous availability of data. One possibility is that the commercial data available on the market comes from personal devices, rather than government phones. These personal devices are carried by soldiers and government contractors.
Weideng and Harrington called on the Secretary of Defense’s Inspector General to conduct reviews of the Department of Defense and other government agencies, in order to determine why existing policies failed to prevent the sale of military personnel’s location data online. They proposed changes to the policies, “in order to better protect U.S. personnel.”
