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The company is accused of purchasing ads with the purpose of geolocating and surveilling users
A report from Reuters claims that Israeli ad tech firm Discover-Tech has been targeting Starlink users for surveillance, according to six anonymous sources familiar with the matter.
The sources claim that the company pursued a large scale ad purchasing campaign aimed at surreptitiously gaining access to targeted users’ location and tracking their internet activity.
The report builds upon a previous report published on 15 October by TrendAI, a subsidiary of Japanese security firm Trend Micro, which first revealed suspicious ad purchasing activity by a company referred to by a codename, “Shadow-Earth-79”.
Shadow-Earth-79, since revealed to be Discover-Tech, was shown to be the number one bidder for ad-space via Starlink in over 100 countries, including Syria, Libya, Yemen, and South Sudan – countries with “almost no demand” for Western advertisements.
In total, Discover Tech accounted for 12.9% of winning advertisements in Starlink traffic, almost five-times higher than the average of 2.6%.
Online advertisers typically compete for ad space on websites and apps through a complex auction process. During this process, data about the end receivers of those ads can be shared with bidders. This data, when recorded over time and combined with other available information, can allow for individual identification, geolocation, and targeting with surveillance software.
TrendAI’s report said that the company’s bidding patterns showed an “obvious skew” towards Starlink users, likely related to “targeting and tracking infrastructure rather than a commercial advertising operation.”
The same day that TrendAI’s report was released, Discover-Tech was also accused of wider surveillance efforts by cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab and ad tech specialist Confiant. This included using Candiru spyware alongside its ads to compromise user devices, including 5 Windows devices at the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera between 2024 and 2025.
“Very likely hundreds of millions of people would have been touched by Discover-Tech,” explained Confiant cofounder Jerome Dangu.
Alphabet (Google), IAB Europe, and Comcast’s Beeswax have all cut the company off from their ad platforms in the past month.
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