It has been discovered that hostile forces were purchasing location data for advertising purposes to track and monitor U.S. military personnel.
It has been revealed that U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and Central Asia, has stated that it has received multiple threat reports that 'hostile forces are misusing commercial location data to target or monitor U.S. military personnel in operational areas.'
Exclusive: US military personnel are being targeted using location data, Pentagon letter shows | Reuters
US says troops were targeted with location data, as senator warns ad industry is a 'national security threat' | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/28/us-says-troops-were-targeted-with-location-data-as-senator-warns-ad-industry-is-a-national-security-threat/
When using smartphone apps or web services, location information is sometimes used for displaying and measuring the effectiveness of advertisements. For example, in systems that 'display advertisements for nearby stores' or 'measure whether people who saw an advertisement visited a physical store,' location information obtained from the device is important.
However, when commercial location data intended for advertising is bought and sold through data brokers—businesses that collect data from app and service providers and sell it to other companies and organizations—there is a possibility that the user's movement history may be shared with parties they did not intend to share it with. While commercial location data may not directly include a user's name, tracking the places the same device returns to every night or visits daily can sometimes allow for inferences about home, work, and behavioral patterns.
According to Reuters, U.S. Central Command explained in a letter dated April 14, 2026, to Senator Ron Wyden that it had received multiple threat reports indicating that adversarial forces were misusing commercial location data to target or monitor U.S. military personnel in operational areas. The letter reportedly did not provide specific examples or details of the damage.
Senator Wyden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers say this is the first time U.S. officials have officially acknowledged that U.S. military personnel were targeted using commercial location data in areas where combat is taking place. In a letter sent to the Department of Defense, the group of lawmakers warned that commercial location data could be used to identify where U.S. military personnel gather and their daily routines.
Hostile forces could potentially use commercial location data to select targets for missile, drone, and roadside bomb attacks, as well as for counter-espionage. Knowing the locations and movement patterns of military personnel could lead not only to attacks, but also to contacting, tailing, and gathering intelligence on them.
Problems surrounding commercial location data have been pointed out before. According to Reuters, in 2016, a US defense contractor was reportedly able to use commercial location data to track the movement of special operations forces from US bases to highly sensitive locations in Syria. Also, Wired and two German news organizations revealed detailed movements of people working around US military and intelligence facilities in Germany, based on billions of coordinate data collected by a data broker.
A group of lawmakers is criticizing the U.S. Department of Defense for not taking sooner action to protect military personnel. Proposed measures include disabling advertising IDs linked to military-issued devices, automatically turning off location sharing on smartphones in operational areas, and avoiding the use of Google Chrome on government-issued devices, instead opting for browsers with a greater emphasis on privacy.
Representative Pat Harrigan, a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer and signatory to the letter, stated that browsers like Chrome are built in a way that collects and shares user data, and that each time they remain on government-issued devices, it's like handing weapons to the enemy. Google, on the other hand, explains that Chrome has industry-leading security and says it has long supported stronger rules and protections against data brokers.
The U.S. Department of Defense told Reuters that it would 'respond directly to lawmakers,' but did not provide further details. Senator Wyden stated that 'it's time to start treating the advertising technology industry as a national security threat.'
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in Smartphone, Security, Posted by log1d_ts