“Warning—DeepSeek Is A Chinese Security Nightmare Come True”
Timing really is everything. A week on from TikTok’s short-lived ban over fears of Chinese harvesting U.S. data, despite consistent denials from the platform and its parent that it’s doing anything of the sort, here comes another app that admits to doing exactly that. And if you still think TikTok is bad — this is so much worse.
DeepSeek has shocked the U.S. in many ways almost overnight. Seemingly beating leading Generative AI platforms with a cut-price, open-source, software-led approach that has taken a sledgehammer to their business plans. Seemingly running blatant China-friendly censorship in plain sight, not via a subtle algorithm no-one sees. And seemingly taking worries about AI’s data privacy risks to a whole new level.
DeepSeek isn’t hiding any of this — far from it. “The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country where you live,” it tells users. “We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.” As for what that information might be —everything.
“We collect your information in three ways: Information You Provide, Automatically Collected Information, and Information From Other Sources.” And that includes personal data when you set up your account, anything you enter into its platform, including “your text or audio input, prompt, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content that you provide to our model and Services.”
But there’s more. “We automatically collect certain information from you,” DeepSeek says, “including internet or other network activity information such as your IP address, unique device identifiers, and cookies… We collect certain device and network connection information… This information includes your device model, operating system, keystroke patterns or rhythms, IP address, and system language… Where you log-in from multiple devices, we use information such as your device ID and user ID to identify your activity across devices to give you a seamless log-in experience and for security purposes.”
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Zak Doffman has covered security, surveillance and privacy on Forbes since 2018, focusing on updates from the world’s largest tech companies, staying safe on smartphones and social media, and the dangers of AI. Doffman’s stories include Google’s privacy nightmares, China’s dangerous tech split, Microsoft unmasking nation-state spyware, Meta’s secret phone tracking and Samsung Vs iPhone.
Doffman has worked in the surveillance industry for over 20 years, in the U.S., Europe and Asia. He has been regularly cited in the media, including BBC, Sky, NPR, NBC, Channel 4, TF1, ITV and Fox. Follow Doffman on Forbes and X, or contact him at zak@duck.com or on Signal or Telegram.
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