{"id":567,"date":"2026-04-11T08:29:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T08:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/?p=567"},"modified":"2026-04-11T08:29:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T08:29:53","slug":"law-enforcement-used-webloc-to-track-500-million-devices-via-ad-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/?p=567","title":{"rendered":"Law Enforcement Used Webloc to Track 500 Million Devices via Ad Data"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hungarian domestic intelligence, the national police in El Salvador, and several U.S. law\u00a0enforcement and police departments have been attributed to the use of an advertising-based global geolocation surveillance system called\u00a0Webloc<\/b>.<\/p>\n

The tool was developed by Israeli company Cobwebs Technologies and is now sold by its successor Penlink after\u00a0the two firms merged in July\u00a02023<\/a>, according to a report<\/a> published by the Citizen Lab. Penlink, founded in 1986, is a provider of \u00abmission-critical communications and digital evidence collection and analysis software\u00bb to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and\u00a0across the\u00a0world.<\/p>\n

U.S. customers of the Webloc include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. military, Texas Department of Public\u00a0Safety, DHS\u00a0West\u00a0Virginia,\u00a0NYC district attorneys, and various police departments in Los Angeles, Dallas, Baltimore, Tucson, Durham, and in smaller cities and counties like the City of Elk Grove and Pinal\u00a0County.<\/p>\n

\u00abWebloc is sold as an add-on product to the social media and web intelligence\u00a0system Tangles<\/a>,\u00bb Citizen Lab researchers Wolfie Christl, Astrid Perry, Luis Fernando Garcia, Siena Anstis, and Ron Deibert said. \u00abWebloc provides access to a constantly updated stream of records from up to 500 million mobile devices across the globe that contain device identifiers, location coordinates, and profile data harvested from mobile apps and digital advertising.\u00bb<\/p>\n

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\"Cybersecurity\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The ad-based surveillance system, in a nutshell, makes use\u00a0of data purchased from mobile apps and digital advertising<\/a> to analyze the behaviours and movements of hundreds of millions of people. It\u00a0was officially announced by Cobwebs Technologies in October\u00a02020, describing<\/a> it as a\u00a0\u00abcutting-edge location intelligence\u00a0platform<\/a> that gathers and analyzes web data fused with geospatial data points, using interactive layered maps to connect the digital world with physical\u00a0data.\u00bb\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Customers of the tool can use it to monitor the location, movements, and personal characteristics of entire populations up to three years in the past. According to information available<\/a> on Penlink’s website, Webloc can be used for \u00abinvestigating and interpreting location-based data to support your cases.\u00bb Webloc also has the capability to infer location from IP addresses and identify the persons behind the devices by gathering their home addresses and workplaces.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Cobwebs Technologies was among the seven cyber mercenaries that\u00a0were deplatformed by\u00a0Meta in December 2021 for operating about 200 accounts to conduct reconnaissance on targets and even engage in social engineering to join closed communities and forums and trick people into revealing personal information.<\/p>\n

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The social media giant revealed at the time that it had identified Cobwebs Technologies customers in Bangladesh, Hong Kong, the United States, New Zealand, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and\u00a0Poland. \u00abIn addition to targeting related to law enforcement activities, we also observed frequent targeting of activists, opposition politicians, and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico,\u00bb Meta\u00a0noted.<\/p>\n

Reports\u00a0from 404\u00a0Media<\/a>, Forbes<\/a>,\u00a0and Texas\u00a0Observer<\/a>\u00a0have revealed<\/a> that Webloc can be used to track phones without a warrant, with\u00a0one procurement\u00a0notice<\/a> highlighting the tool’s \u00abability to automate and continuously monitor unique mobile advertising IDs, geolocated IP addresses, and connected devices analysis.\u00bb<\/p>\n

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\"Cybersecurity\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

An analysis of corporate records and other public information has revealed that Cobwebs Technologies shares links to Israeli spyware\u00a0vendor Quadream through Omri Timianker, the founder and former president of Cobwebs Technologies, who now oversees Penlink’s international operations. The\u00a0company is suspected to have shuttered its operations in\u00a02023.<\/p>\n

As many as 219 active servers associated\u00a0with Cobwebs product deployments<\/a>\u00a0have been identified, most of which are located in the U.S. (126), Netherlands (32), Singapore (17), Germany (8), Hong Kong (8), and the U.K. (7). Potential product servers have also been detected in various countries across Africa, Asia, and\u00a0Europe.<\/p>\n

Responding to the report, Penlink said the findings \u00abappear to rely on either inaccurate information or a misunderstanding about how we operate, including practices that Penlink does not engage in following our acquisition of Cobwebs Technologies in 2023.\u00bb It also said it complies with U.S. state\u00a0privacy\u00a0laws.<\/p>\n

\u00abOur research shows that intrusive and legally questionable ad-based surveillance (i.e., without a warrant or adequate oversight)\u00a0is being\u00a0used by military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies down to local police units in several countries across the globe,\u00bb the Citizen Lab\u00a0said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hungarian domestic intelligence, the national police in El Salvador, and several U.S. law\u00a0enforcement and police departments have been attributed to the use of an advertising-based global geolocation surveillance system called\u00a0Webloc.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,175,999,1172,108,1174,1173],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-data","tag-devices","tag-enforcement","tag-law","tag-million","tag-track","tag-webloc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedigitalfortress.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}