Israeli ad firm was top bidder for Starlink-linked ads
The firm was already named in an October 15 report over spyware-carrying ads, and researchers say its bidding pattern suggests tracking.
28 Oct 2026 0 reads Compiled with AI
Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising technology firm, has been linked to a suspected surveillance effort aimed at Starlink users, according to a Reuters report citing six people familiar with the matter. The firm was already under scrutiny after a Citizen Lab report on October 15 named it as the buyer of ads that delivered Candiru spyware to devices at Al Jazeera. Google has since blocked it from its ad platforms, and IAB Europe removed it from its vendor list.
Dominant Starlink bidding
TrendAI, the research arm of Trend Micro, published an analysis the same day under the codename Shadow-Earth-79. It found the entity was the No. 1 winning bidder for ad impressions on Starlink traffic in 105 countries, taking about 12.9% of winning ads in its sample. That compares with a 2.6% baseline across general traffic, a nearly fivefold over-representation.
Shadow-Earth-79 captured 91.3% of observed Starlink wins in Argentina, 89.1% in the Philippines and 82.6% in Japan. It was also the top bidder in Syria, Libya, Yemen and South Sudan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan. Several of these countries restrict or prohibit Starlink. TrendAI said the pattern was consistent with "targeting and tracking infrastructure rather than a commercial advertising operation."
Researchers have not publicly confirmed infections of Starlink devices, and the findings do not show that anyone was tracked. Neither Discover-Tech nor SpaceX has commented on whether the ads were used to track users. Discover-Tech's ads reached networks associated with NATO, the European Parliament and the U.S. Department of Defense, according to Citizen Lab and Confiant.
Online advertising has long drawn criticism as a surveillance tool. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has said smartphones broadcast a user's exact location thousands of times a day to dozens of companies. Real-time bidding shares detailed device and location data with every bidder, which can enable tracking without any breach of Starlink's own network.
