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US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

theguardian.com

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Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#71

Post by tencentshill »

bigyabai wrote: post #37
tencentshill wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It now directly affects the troops and military, who they ostensibly do care about. Maybe the citizens can have a little privacy reform, as a trickle-down treat.

The US will still surveil the troops and citizens. All this does is reduce the commercial attack surface for adversaries, privacy be damned.

The "buying from advertisers" strategy was a workaround, and has yet to be properly tested in court. Hopefully we'll get that loophole closed soon. They also use it heavily for recruitment to pinpoint the most desperate youth.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#72

Post by slowmovintarget »

samus wrote: post #39
slowmovintarget wrote: post #9

This is just happening now? Shouldn't this have been done for troop security a long time ago?

The US is currently not deploying troops against an adversary that can make use of that information.

Why would they need to be deployed for an adversary to make use of that information? Sure it's more valuable on deployment, but wouldn't we also want to, you know, not give information on mobilization or lack thereof?

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#73

Post by elevation »

jdm2212 wrote: post #56
thrawa8387336 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, FAANG still manage to do it, day in day out.

IIRC they actually don't and it materially reduced Meta's profit when Apple rolled out the advertiser ID system.

That may have been true initially but meta has enough information to heuristically observe unidentified users and compare their behaviors with known consumers. It only takes a few actions to uniquely identify a consumer with a high degree of confidence.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#74

Post by lovich »

sublinear wrote: post #35
danparsonson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You insist on using broad brushstroke language like "masked goons". Nobody is going to listen to your lack of nuance on other topics either.

I mean, they are masked, right?

And they’ve been going around beating people and in a few cases killing them, like goons, right?

Just because terms can and have been used hyperbolically doesn’t mean that the same term cannot accurately describe other situations.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#75

Post by lovich »

metiscus wrote: post #69
ferguess_k wrote: post #61

Does it make sense to give the troops special phones instead of their own? I always find it weird that soldiers can take their own phones into the base.

Most of what goes on on most bases is as unsecret as it gets. The rooms where sensitive things happen have security measures in place and they keep you from bringing your phone in there. Usually a little locker is provided where you store your phone while you are inside the protected area. In some very sensitive places there may be additional active and passive measures but usually people with access to those areas p…

Unless your Matt Gaetz and co, in which case you just storm into the SCIF with a recording device and are allowed to get away with it.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#76

Post by silver92bullet »

This is probably a smart move. Especially finger printing is more and more intelligent. If foreign actors are using exercise tracking apps to track US Military personnel and positions. It seems reasonable that they would want to block something that is much lower effort for tracking.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#77

Post by pjc50 »

ferguess_k wrote: post #61

Does it make sense to give the troops special phones instead of their own? I always find it weird that soldiers can take their own phones into the base.

It allows fun things like locating aircraft carriers on Strava.

I don't think the Iranians have direct targeting tech for individual mobiles for decapitation strikes yet, that's an Israeli capability.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#78

Post by gruez »

pnw wrote: post #46
tencentshill wrote: post #2

It sounds like they disabled the "advertising ID" OS feature, but there are many other ways to fingerprint a device for advertising. Maybe this will lead to real privacy reform, now that the true risks are apparent. Not to mention ICE using the same data against civilians.

Disabling "advertising ID" on iOS makes it extremely difficult to reliably fingerprint phones. Apple doesn't allow SDKs which attempt to bypass this, so the app would have to have a first party auth of some type.

>Disabling "advertising ID" on iOS makes it extremely difficult to reliably fingerprint phones.

You got this flipped. The whole point of "fingerprinting" is to build a stable identifier that works even if a explicit identifier (IMEI or advertising ID) isn't available. And yes, there are shady SDKs that do this without facing repercussions.

https://www.buchodi.com/i-broke-applovins-mediation-cipher-p...

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#79

Post by ambicapter »

jonhohle wrote: post #26
iamnothere wrote: post #18

Wait until they realize that military spouses and children might also need this, and government employees, and sensitive contractors, etc. It’s almost as if “ad trackers” shouldn’t exist at all. The US government used to love this stuff when it was the only one who could abuse it. There might be a different outlook now that the tables have turned.

It seems like stalking laws in most jurisdictions should already cover this. Is there any legal precedent that could help without the need for new laws?

Laws won't help against foreign actors, which are, after all, the main adversaries of the military.

Re: US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones

#80

Post by roosterIllusi0n »

tencentshill wrote: post #2

It sounds like they disabled the "advertising ID" OS feature, but there are many other ways to fingerprint a device for advertising. Maybe this will lead to real privacy reform, now that the true risks are apparent. Not to mention ICE using the same data against civilians.

Everything they do is a framework for consumer protection laws.
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