Starlink Users Secretly Targeted by Israeli Company

Starlink users have been targeted for surveillance by an Israeli advertising technology company, according to six sources who spoke about findings by digital defence firm TrendAI.

Discover-Tech advertisements were shown to Starlink users to track or spy on them, the sources said, Reuters reported on Wednesday (28 October 2026).

Researchers also found that Discover-Tech was among the biggest bidders for advertisements shown to Starlink users. It was also the leading bidder for traffic from the service in more than 100 countries, including areas where satellite internet services are banned.

TrendAI researchers had previously not named Discover-Tech as being behind the targeting of Starlink users. They used the identifier Shadow-Earth-79, which turned out to be TrendAI’s code name for Discover-Tech.

TrendAI did not directly explain why it had withheld the company’s name, saying only that it sought to reduce the risk of error and avoid labels driven by sensationalism or misleading information.

Separately, Canadian cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab and New York ad-tech firm Confiant identified Discover-Tech. They said the company had abused the advertising-bidding process in a way that could expose internet users’ data to bidders.

Those parties could then collect leaked data, process it and combine it with other information. This could reveal users’ identities, enable tracking and even allow them to be monitored.

According to Citizen Lab and Confiant, the advertisements had appeared on sensitive networks belonging to media organisations, governments and technology companies.

Google, Comcast and several other companies have removed Discover-Tech from their respective advertising platforms.