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TrendAI Researchers Tie Discovery-Tech Ad Bids to Starlink User Surveillance
A TrendAI report says Israeli ad company Discovery-Tech bid heavily on Starlink traffic and may have used those ads to locate and surveil users. The report refers to the company by the codename SHADOW-EARTH-79.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Why it matters
An ad company outbidding everyone for Starlink traffic in 105 countries, including places where the service is banned, turns routine programmatic bidding into a location-tracking channel for satellite internet users.
Key Facts
- TrendAI researchers found Discovery-Tech bid on 12.9% of Starlink bid opportunities, second behind SteelHouse at 38.4%.
- Discovery-Tech ranked first in bid amounts on Starlink traffic in 105 countries.
- Those countries include Cameroon, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, and Libya, where Starlink is officially prohibited or restricted.
- TrendAI refers to Discovery-Tech by the codename SHADOW-EARTH-79 in its published report.
- Google and Comcast have removed Discovery-Tech's ads from their advertising platforms.
Discovery-Tech ranked first in bid amounts on Starlink traffic in 105 countries, including states where Starlink is restricted. Google and Comcast have removed its ads.
Discovery-Tech bid on 91.1% of all bid opportunities in Hungary and 90.1% in Israel, according to the TrendAI analysis. Those ratios were also high in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Thailand, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. On Starlink traffic specifically, the Los Angeles-based SteelHouse placed the most bids at 196,791 (38.4%), with Discovery-Tech second at 66,208 (12.9%). Discovery-Tech still led on bid amounts in 105 countries, among them Cameroon, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, and Libya, where Starlink is officially prohibited or restricted. TrendAI flags two geofeed mismatches: an IP range identified as Myanmar shows as Canada, and one identified as Sudan shows as Niger.
Written with AI by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited. See our editorial policy.
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