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Reply to @wchr@mastodon.social
Wolfie Christl@wchr@mastodon.social (2026-10-16 00:09:44)
At the core of our report is the Israeli firm Discover-Tech Ltd, which presents itself as a 'legitimate' advertising firm but which we found operated as a bridge between surveillance vendors and the digital advertising industry.
As a result of the investigation, Discover-Tech has now been widely disconnected from the ads ecosystem.
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Wolfie Christl@wchr@mastodon.social (2026-10-16 00:16:49)
Discover-Tech operated a platform called 'Controlium' that enabled its spyware partners to profile and automatically infect devices when an ad was shown.
To make this work, they 'exploited' the real-time auction system that underpins targeting and data harvesting in today's digital advertising ecosystem. They also 'exploited' the ability to run code attached to ads in apps and browsers.
Discover-Tech operated its own ad buying platform called MyDSP and also used DSPs operated by other firms.
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Wolfie Christl@wchr@mastodon.social (2026-10-16 00:21:17)
We found that Discover-Tech delivered ads via Google, Yandex and other ad vendors including Beeswax (Comcast), Vungle (Liftoff), Eskimi and Sunteng.
Discover-Tech was listed as a 'certified' and 'approved' ad vendor by Google and the advertising industry association IAB Europe from 2020 until Oct 2026.
The ad vendor registries maintained by Google and IAB Europe helped make Discover-Tech appear to be a legitimate vendor and facilitated its participation in the advertising ecosystem at scale.
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image: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/117/445/598/699/331/493/original/9903297ab017febe.png