Slashdot reader DeanonymizedCoward writes: Reuters reports that the US Military is disabling ad tracking on devices, to prevent adversaries from buying publicly-available tracking data to assist in targeting troops. Military officials say that they have disabled trackers on a variety of computers and mobile devices, according to letters released on Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden, and following reports that commercially-available tracking data has been used to target troops in the Middle East.... Wyden said in a statement that it was clear that the military's efforts "have not been effective at neutralizing this threat." U.S. Representative Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican, said that U.S. enemies "should not be able to pull out a credit card and buy information that helps them track American troops." Rep. Harrigan remains silent as to the larger question of whether the general public should be able to pull out a credit card and buy information that helps them track anyone they please. "The Pentagon said in an email it would respond to the lawmakers directly," Reuters reports: The Army said in a statement that advertising IDs had been blocked on Windows computers "since before 2021" but that Android and Apple mobile devices had only had it disabled by default "since at least February 2026...." The effort to reduce the location data generated by smartphones comes as military officials weigh increasingly strict restrictions on phone use overall. In July, Reuters reported that some deployed personnel in the Middle East could be ordered to surrender their phones amid concerns that mobile videos they were posting to the internet were helping Iran target American bases in the region.

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Apple has begun rolling out ads in Apple Maps, with sponsored businesses appearing at the top of search results and in the "suggested places" section for users in the U.S. and Canada. Apple says the ads can be based on approximate location, search terms, or the area of the map being viewed, but are not tied to users' Apple Accounts and personal data remains on-device. 9to5Mac reports: Ads appear just like every other business listing, except they have a small blue badge that says 'Ad.' You can see examples of ads [embedded in the article]. Like Apple's ads policy with other services, the company touts user privacy protections for ads in Maps. Per Apple Newsroom: "Ads on Maps builds on Apple's broader privacy-first approach to advertising, and maintains the same privacy protections Maps users enjoy today. A user's location and the ads they see and interact with in Maps are not associated with a user's Apple Account. Personal data stays on a user's device, is not collected or stored by Apple, and is not shared with third parties."

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Longtime Slashdot reader mccalli writes: Times Magazine has started serving adverts with "brand messages" to AI crawlers, which are not part of its main page. The aim seems to be to influence chatbots to talk about the brand offerings in a positive light that can't be traced back to the actual page. Notably, they've excluded Google chatbots from this, likely because Google penalizes companies that show different search offerings to its bots versus actual human visitors. "Maybe it's more important to influence the agent than even the human, because with a human you influence one person. When you influence ChatGPT, you're influencing potentially all of ChatGPT," said Jonah Goodhart, co-founder and CEO of ad tech platform Mobian. "If ChatGPT changes what it says about [a brand], it's massive and it's more than any one campaign could ever do. The big idea here is LLMs and AI want trusted information about brands. We're serving that up to them in a very straightforward, easy way." The ad strategy was uncovered by Germany-based freelance software developer Vincent Schmalbach, who detailed his findings in a blog post. Digiday and The Register both reported on the story.

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Longtime Slashdot readers schwit1 and fjo3 shared a report about BMW displaying a Spider-Man promotion on connected vehicle screens in more than 70 markets. According to reports, drivers had to play or dismiss the ad before they could use the infotainment system. Futurism reports: BMW, showing that it was about as in-touch as its drivers are familiar with turn signals, teased the promotion as a "special surprise." According to The Autopian's coverage and the heaps of complaints online, the ad appears on the center console screen when you start up the car. When the ad's done playing -- a cheap looking animation that doesn't come close to warranting all this hubbub -- it even has the gall to ask you to scan a QR code. While it does give you the option to play or skip the "festive animation," it's still an annoying extra step drivers have to take before pulling up the map they need or the music they want to listen to. It's also a breach of trust: drivers keep their cars connected so they receive critical software updates, not unexpectedly see ads when they're trying to hit the road. Few owners were pleased. Enthusiasts in the r/BMW subreddit had a veritable meltdown when someone posted footage of the ad playing on their infotainment system.

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