New Starlink scam in South Africa

South Africans desperate for Internet connectivity in rural areas should beware of a new suspected scam operation claiming to sell Starlink kits and hardware that can mask users’ locations from the satellite Internet service.
In recent weeks, numerous Facebook users on South African Starlink community groups have asked about the legitimacy of “Star Connect.”
One unofficial yet proven distributor of Starlink kits in South Africa — IcasaSePush — approached MyBroadband to raise its concerns as it had been inundated with queries about the entity.
The company looked into some key characteristics of Star Connect’s activities and found red flags that strongly suggest it is a scam.
The Star Connect Facebook page was created in late December 2024 and its website starconnect.shop, falsely advertised as starconnectnow.co.za, launched on 29 December 2024.
Its production selection includes Starlink kits at prices comparable to IcasaSePush and real sellers, making it more believable than some previous scams with dirt-cheap offers.
However, while the people behind the page suggest Star Connect is operating in South Africa, the website’s domain links and hosting addresses can be traced back to India.
A Scam Adviser analysis of the website also flagged it as “suspicious” with a Trustscore of 44 out of 100.
It highlighted that Star Connect’s website was on the same server as many lower-rated websites and several spammers and scammers had used the same registrar.
Scam Adviser also said that the website appeared to be using a hosting provider with a dubious reputation.
IcasaSePush could also not find any verified feedback or interactions with Star Connect users and the entity had no reviews on Google or Hellopeter at the time of publication.
Raising further suspicions about Star Connect is that most of the followers and users liking its one month-old Facebook page appeared to be foreign.
At the time of publication, the company had amassed over 1,200 likes and 3,200 followers.
While followers are not visible to the public, a quick look at the users who liked its posts showed the vast majority had names with characters or punctuation that are rarely or never used in South African names.
Adding some authenticity to the alleged scammers’ operations is that they have flooded their Facebook page with photos that appear to show actual employees with Star Connect-branded clothing and merchandise.
Only one of the photos that MyBroadband ran through various AI image detector tools was flagged to likely be AI-generated.
The only other aspects of the other photos that were suspicious were the Star Connect logos on people’s clothing, which appeared to be edited in after the original images were taken.
The photos purporting to show employees also used common Afrikaans names and surnames. We could not find records of any of these people on other social media websites.






Hardware promising impossible capabilities
There is one piece of hardware that Star Connect claims to sell that betrays its legitimacy.
Among the website’s products is a “Region Switcher Pro” device that claims to mask customers locations, making it appear as though they are using the service from an officially-launched country.
It also claims that this device enables users to pay the regular subscription fees in these countries instead of the more expensive roaming fees.
Considering the fact that Starlink relies on satellites that need to know a user’s location to facilitate communication, such a device or modification seems technically impossible.
IcasaSePush itself has tested GPS spoofing of Starlink as it would make it substantially easier for some of its roaming customers to use the service.
It found that it was only possible to spoof the Starlink kit’s detected position 50km from its actual location, before the connection would stop working.
North American Reddit user and Starlink owner Brian Milham also pointed out that Starlink’s dish relied on an accurate GPS location to function.
“If you trick the dish into thinking it’s in another location, then it will be looking for satellites in the wrong area at the wrong time,” he said.
“The advertised solutions are technically unfeasible without access to coverage within satellite boundaries,” IcaseSePush told MyBroadband.

One payment method and no physical address
Customers are provided with details for an account at a major bank, to which they must EFT payments. Only having EFT as a payment option is another red flag.
Scammers open bank accounts with fraudulent or stolen details, or con unsuspecting people into using them as money mules. After a customer makes the payment, the money is withdrawn or transferred.
IcasaSePush also found that Star Connect was registered as a vendor on Red Market, an Angola-based payment gateway. Although the EFT payments are not routed through this gateway, this was also suspicious.
Finally, another red flag was that the company had no physical addresses listed on its website or Facebook page.
MyBroadband contacted Star Connect but did not receive feedback to our questions by the time of publication.
We also reached out to the WhatsApp number provided in its support channels — which was for a personal and not a business account.
A user claiming to be “Andrew Kruger” was initially very responsive but went quiet after we asked whether it would be possible to collect our product from Star Connect’s address or a collection point.