Publicly released letters from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden revealed that U.S. military officials claim to have disabled ad trackers on a range of phones and computers. This action followed reports that commercially available location data had been used to target U.S. forces in the Middle East. In July 2025, a report indicated that Iran may have exploited vulnerabilities in mobile phone networks across the Middle East to monitor the movements of U.S. military personnel and contractors during the recent conflict. The report, citing telecommunications data from the "Mobile Surveillance Monitor" research project and multiple sources close to the issue, showed that this alleged cyber campaign has raised new concerns in Washington about the security of American personnel deployed in the region. Recently, U.S. legislators have requested the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate why location records linked to military sites continue to appear in commercial databases, even though the various branches of the armed forces have disabled mobile advertising identifiers on government-provided phones. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat from Oregon) and Representative Pat Harrigan (Republican from North Carolina) submitted this request on September 4. They indicated that reports continue to reveal the existence of location data that can identify where U.S. military personnel gather, train, or work. The legislators had raised this issue in May with a bipartisan group of 12 other members of Congress. They warned that mobile applications and advertising software development kits can collect location signals and transmit them to the advertising market, where data brokers can compile files related to military personnel and installations. The Department of Defense has been aware of this risk since at least 2016, the legislators said. They requested that the director of information systems, Kirsten A. Davies, disable advertising identifiers on Defense Department smartphones and require personnel to disable these identifiers on personal phones brought into military installations or taken abroad. Commercial data sets continue to contain location records. Several components of the Department of Defense claim to have followed the policy regarding government devices. The Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command indicated that they had disabled advertising identifiers on government-provided devices. This measure removes an important identifier from military phones. It does not, however, explain why commercial data sets continue to contain location records associated with Defense Department sites. A mobile advertising identifier, or MAID, provides advertising agencies with a common tag for a device. Data brokers can use this tag to link location records from different applications, publishers, and advertising systems. When an application or advertising software development kit sends a MAID as part of an advertising auction, the companies participating in the auction can receive this identifier along with other signals from the device. A researcher stated that removing MAIDs from government phones could prevent the records related to these devices from being sold in bulk. This measure could reduce risks for military personnel and their families, including those deployed abroad. He explained that this identifier presented two risks: data brokers could use it to link records between different data sets, and advertising systems could receive it during auctions before a broker sells a compiled data set. In February 2023, an investigation by the Defense Department's Office of the Inspector General had already revealed that phones provided to Pentagon personnel are regularly loaded with dating apps, games, and possibly even TikTok and other Chinese applications. The investigation revealed that these applications are prohibited, but Pentagon employees still download them, thereby introducing "operational and cybersecurity risks," which, according to the report, endanger U.S. national security. The legislators' request does not set a new compliance deadline. It asks the Defense Department's oversight body to determine why existing controls have not prevented location data from appearing in commercial data sets and to identify additional measures that could protect military personnel. It is interesting to note that the Israeli Defense Forces have required their senior officers to use only iPhones for official communications since December 2025, banning Android devices due to increased security concerns. According to the Israeli military, this decision aimed to reduce the risk of data leaks and threats related to malware by standardizing mobile devices within the military command. This measure follows growing concerns about cyberespionage, including operations supported by Iran and Hamas that target the phones of officers using social engineering tactics. Although Android security has improved, the Israeli military has decided to favor the controlled ecosystem of iPhones for highly secure environments.