The Pentagon switched off ad tracking on troops' phones after learning adversaries were using it to find them.
A letter from a U.S. senator confirms the change. It follows reports that foreign adversaries pulled location data from ad-tracking systems to target American service members. Smartphone apps routinely hand device location to ad networks and data brokers as part of everyday ad auctions - technology built to sell sneakers and app subscriptions, not defend soldiers. That data, meant for marketers, ended up helping someone else find troops instead.
This isn't an abstract privacy debate. It's a case where ordinary consumer ad-tech infrastructure became a physical security hole for the very people it was never built to protect. It also confirms what privacy researchers have warned about for years: location data sold into the ad ecosystem is only as safe as the weakest link in a long chain of resellers and brokers.
The fix here was blunt - just cut the tracking - which raises the obvious question of why troops' devices were feeding that pipeline in the first place.