{
  "id": 16587719,
  "title": "From a Domain to an Identity Lead: Following the Advertising Trail",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/26/from-a-domain-to-an-identity-lead-following-the-advertising-trail",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-26T08:33:49.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "HackerNoon",
    "slug": "hackernoon",
    "url": "https://hackernoon.com/from-a-domain-to-an-identity-lead-following-the-advertising-trail?source=rss"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In investigative work, a website can provide limited information about its owner, even if it contains advertising infrastructure that generates revenue. When examining a domain with suspected fraud or hosting content, security analyst Tushar Karumudi focuses on the advertising infrastructure to uncover more about the site's operator. Ad identifiers associated with ads running on a website can connect the domain to other sites, offering additional investigative leads. Karumudi's approach involves tracking these identifiers across domains and examining connected websites, archived pages, and corporate records to identify the operator's identity. Starting with a domain and an identity question, Karumudi follows telemetry data to attribute the action to a specific person behind the domain. When the site provides little useful ownership information, advertising relationships become a new area of investigation. The value of an ad identifier depends on what it connects, and finding the same ad ID on another domain provides another site to examine for information. The shared identifier links the search locations, shifting the inquiry from finding connected domains to examining what they reveal about their operators. Karumudi uses the Wayback Machine to examine archived versions of domains and other sites sharing the same advertising identifier. Archived pages may contain useful details that the current site lacks. He also checks corporate records through OpenCorporates to identify any business connections. By following the shared advertising ID, Karumudi can guide his search towards finding more information about the operators. This investigative workflow is part of Karumudi's broader threat intelligence work, where he connects outside intelligence to activity within the systems he investigates. His work aims to provide investigators with concrete actions to take, such as identifying the people or businesses behind a website involved in rehosting content or fraud. The advertising infrastructure used by these sites can help connect outside intelligence to internal system behavior, offering a specific lead to follow. Karumudi shares this open-source technique internally and plans to incorporate it into a project called paytrace, which follows advertising relationships to identify the parties receiving revenue from a website.",
  "summary": "Learn how Tushar Karumudi uses shared advertising IDs, archived webpages, and corporate records to trace suspicious domains and uncover identity leads.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}