There have been numerous scandals surrounding this artificial intelligence company which had astonished the world by seemingly rivaling the successful chatbot ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost. However, now, regulators and privacy advocates have raised questions about the safety of users' data after the company launched its service.
A government probe into what data the company collects and how it is stored has resulted in regulators in Italy blocking the app from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, as they investigate how they collect that data. As a result of DeepSeek's failure to address the regulator's concerns regarding its privacy policy, the Italian data protection authority, the Garante, ordered that it block its chatbot within its borders on Thursday.
The DeepSeek company was founded in Hangzhou, China, and it has grown quickly since then.
Liang Feng started the company in 2023. In 2016 he founded the $7 billion hedge fund group High-Flyer with two other business classmates who attended the same university.
As a result, DeepSeek was investigated by the China-based watchdog Xinhua this week about how their data is used. They were looking for information on what personal data is collected, from what sources, for what purpose, and under what legal basis.
A business intelligence startup based in China, DeepSeek, has received much attention in recent months as a result of its rapid growth. However, many corporate finance departments have raised concerns about the security of the startup.
DeepSeek, a free application powered by Artificial Intelligence, achieved the most downloads on the U.S. iOS App Store within weeks of its launch, surpassing OpenAI's ChatGPT, which had gained popularity within weeks.
While the company's popularity has skyrocketed recently, it has drawn the attention of cybersecurity experts and regulators, causing alarms to be raised about data security, intellectual property risks, as well as regulatory compliance issues.
DeepSeek's privacy policy states that the service collects a variety of information about its users, including chat and search query history, device information, keystroke patterns, IP addresses, internet connection, and activity from other apps, as well as information about their activities on the deep seek service.
The same data collection practices are employed by other AI services, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, or Perplexity. Similarly, popular social media apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, and X, also record a great deal of user data. Regulators have sometimes questioned this kind of data-gathering practice.
A new model of the DeepSeek software, DeepSeek R1, was unveiled by the company in January. This is a free AI-powered chatbot whose look and feel are very similar to that of ChatGPT by OpenAITM, based in California.
It is a type of computer program that simulates a human-like conversation with a user through questioning the bot. The bot will then respond to the questions asked using the information it has access to on the internet that it has been trained to handle in a conversation.
There are many possible uses for these programs, including solving mathematics problems, writing drafts of texts such as emails and documents, and translating, or even writing codes, among a multitude of other possibilities.
In the view of experts, DeepSeek's risks go beyond those of TikTok, which has been under scrutiny and could be banned at some point. “DeepSeek raises all the problems that TikTok has raised plus more,” said Stewart Baker, a Washington-based attorney who is a former official of the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.
To provide these advanced AI models with high levels of accuracy, users need to entrust them with highly sensitive personal information and business information.
If users' data can be accessed by an adversary, either intelligence implications are significant"
Increasingly, DeepSeek's AI technology is being used to conduct business research, personal inquiries, and content generation, resulting in an enormous amount of valuable data that DeepSeek is generating.
A study conducted by Feroot suggests DeepSeek's login system utilizes fingerprinting techniques, which tech firms widely use to track the devices of their users to improve security and target advertisements.
Although there is no conclusive proof of Chinese government involvement in this case, the links to China Mobile's identity and authentication infrastructure indicate that Chinese state involvement has taken place.
There has been no response to DeepSeek's requests for comment, leaving critical questions about how far they collaborate with China Mobile and how safe the data of their users is unanswered. Given the increased scrutiny surrounding Chinese-controlled digital platforms, regulators may soon take further action against DeepSeek, mirroring efforts already directed towards TikTok, as a response to the increasing scrutiny regarding these platforms.
A tightening of export regulations was implemented under the Biden administration to prevent China from developing artificial intelligence as quickly as possible.
There are several questions that DeepSeek's success raises regarding the effectiveness of these controls, as well as the status of Washington and Beijing's broader technology battle.
Among the researchers who study Chinese cybersecurity at Yale, Samm Sacks, said that DeepSeek could pose a significant national security threat to the United States, as he pointed out.
According to the public reports that have been made, no Chinese officials are currently trying to obtain personal data about U.S. citizens by using DeepSeek.
In contrast to the debate over TikTok, the fears about China boil down to the mere possibility that Beijing may make use of Americans' data for its purposes, and that is enough to trigger concern.
In addition to Sacks's astute assessment of what DeepSeek might mean for Americans' data, he pointed out that there are two other major factors to be considered. First, the Chinese government already possesses an unimaginable amount of data on them.
In December, Chinese hackers broke into the U.S. A group of Chinese hackers has infiltrated the Treasury Department's computer systems in the past year. They have since been infiltrating US telecom companies to spy on American texts and calls. It should also be noted that there is a vast web of digital data brokers who routinely buy and sell a massive amount of data on Americans.
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