US military officials say they have disabled advertising trackers on a range of phones and computers, according to letters released on Friday by the US senator Ron Wyden and statements given to Reuters.
The development follows reports that commercially available location data had been used to target American forces in the Middle East.
The air force told Wyden it disabled the advertising identifiers on computers and mobile phones two months ago. US Special Operations Command said in a separate letter that it had “recently” disabled them on its Windows devices. The army told Reuters that advertising IDs tied to mobile devices had been disabled since earlier this year
Why does any military, anywhere, allow any software on its devices that it doesn’t have the source code for, including ability to compile and modify it?! Disabling “advertising trackers” is a small first step, yeah…