The U.S. military has disabled advertising trackers on government-issued phones, computers and other devices amid growing concerns that commercially available location data could be used by adversaries to identify and target American troops.
The move follows reports that data collected by mobile applications and sold by commercial data brokers can reveal the locations, movements and routines of military personnel, including those deployed in the Middle East.
Mobile Advertising IDs (MAIDs), which can be used to link devices to users and track their activities and locations, have been disabled across government devices by several branches of the U.S. military. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command have all reported taking measures to restrict the technology.
The development comes after the Department of the Navy warned sailors, Marines and civilian personnel that a “coordinated, multi-domain campaign” was targeting the Navy enterprise. Officials said hostile actors were seeking to gather intelligence, test security measures, disrupt operations and intimidate personnel.
The warning also urged personnel to strengthen their online security and conceal their connections to the military, amid concerns that information shared publicly could be combined with other data to identify individuals and their locations.
Cybersecurity expert Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said disabling advertising identifiers was an important step because it reduces one avenue through which adversaries can obtain location information. However, she cautioned that previously collected commercial data could remain useful even after tracking has been stopped.
The bigger concern, according to Galperin, is the continued use of personal smartphones and other devices, particularly by personnel deployed overseas. Such devices may continue generating information through applications, network connections and other tracking mechanisms even when military-issued equipment has been secured.
“Minimizing the attack surface” is beneficial, Galperin said, but disabling advertising identifiers does not eliminate all possible methods of tracking.
The warning highlights the growing challenge facing militaries as commercially available digital information becomes an intelligence resource. Data that may appear harmless — including location information, social-media activity, photographs, fitness-app records and online interactions — can potentially be combined to reveal sensitive military patterns.
U.S. lawmakers have called for a Pentagon investigation into whether existing safeguards are sufficient, warning that adversaries should not be able to purchase commercially available information that could help locate American troops.
The U.S. military has therefore increasingly moved toward stricter controls on smartphones, social media and other digital services as it attempts to prevent personal technology from becoming an unintended source of battlefield intelligence.
Sources: DefenseScoop, Task & Purpose, Reuters
