Google blocks Israeli Discover-Tech after researchers’ findings — Cyprus Mail
Google has removed Israeli digital advertising agency Discover-Tech from its advertising platforms following investigations in which researchers said it tracked internet users and facilitated the delivery of spyware. Cyprus Mail reports, citing research by Citizen Lab and advertising security company Confiant.
Google said it had worked with the researchers and blocked Discover-Tech for “systematic violations” of platform rules. The European digital marketing association IAB Europe also suspended Discover-Tech from its list of globally approved vendors after an audit found policy violations. Comcast’s advertising technology subsidiary Beeswax said it had removed Discover-Tech from its platform.
Advertising for tracking
According to Citizen Lab, Discover-Tech advertisements, which often offered ordinary products such as phones and headphones, appeared through partner networks on more than 120,000 websites and in 75,000 apps. Researchers claim that loading such ads on a page could make it possible to identify and track users and, in some cases, attempt to obtain smartphone owners’ phone numbers.
Confiant co-founder Jérôme Dangu said Discover-Tech distributed at least 10 million advertisements daily in various countries. According to him, data-sharing mechanisms between advertising systems known as cookie matching could allow people to be tracked beyond the websites where the ads were displayed.
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Link to spyware
Citizen Lab and Confiant said that some of the advertisements were used to deliver spyware from Israeli company Candiru to devices. Confiant noted that ads linked to Candiru accounted for only a small share of Discover-Tech’s overall advertising flow.
Citizen Lab reported that Candiru spyware delivered through Discover-Tech advertisements was used to compromise 45 Windows devices at Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera in 2024–2025. The researchers said they confirmed this through network logs shared with them by the media company.
According to Citizen Lab, such advertisements were also displayed on the networks of the UN, NATO, the European Commission, and more than a dozen national governments. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Commerce blacklisted Candiru over allegations of supplying spyware used to maliciously target officials, journalists, activists, and academics.
