The growing popularity of DeepSeek AI in the US is raising national security concerns among officials. The Chinese company’s incursion also severely crashed the stocks of big tech companies like NVIDIA, so it could also compromise the position of American firms in the market as well. Experts have already warned about potential security risks when using the chatbot. However, you may not know how much DeepSeek AI is “watching” you.
US officials and experts have had to act quickly to try to determine the potential risk that DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence poses to the country. OpenAI and Microsoft even suspect that the company illegally “integrated” GPT data models into its own. Now, more experts are warning users about things they should not do on DeepSeek.
Things you should avoid typing in DeepSeek AI
There are concerns related to DeepSeek’s data handling terms. The company’s policies confirm that all user data worldwide is stored on servers in China. The risk lies in the fact that the laws in the Asian country are a bit different from those in the West. For example, companies whose servers are hosted in China will be forced to cooperate with Chinese intelligence efforts. This involves requests for user data, which the firm must provide upon request.
In Western countries, government access to user data often requires a court order. This can occur in cases of extreme necessity, such as potential criminal investigations.
Now that you know that the Chinese government could request access to your data, you probably have an idea of what kind of information you shouldn’t type into the DeepSeek chatbot. Lukasz Olejnik, an independent consultant and a researcher at King’s College London Institute for AI, offered some recommendations and warnings for people interested in using the platform.
“Be careful about inputting sensitive personal data, financial details, trade secrets, or information about healthcare. Anything you type could be stored, analyzed, or requested by authorities under China’s data laws,” Olejnik said.
DeepSeek AI is “watching” what you type, but it is not the only one
It’s noteworthy that DeepSeek can also collect “keystroke patterns or rhythms.” This usage condition is actually common even on social platforms, something that many may not have known about. This “tap/click tracking” applies to when you’re using the app or website, not outside of it. Services like Facebook and TikTok have similar policies for collecting metrics and usage data.
Ron Deibert, the director of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, warned about using the platform for people who, for one reason or another, may be under surveillance or persecution by the Chinese state. “Users who are high-risk in relation to mainland China, including human rights activists, members of targeted diaspora populations, and journalists should be particularly sensitive to these risks and avoid inputting anything into the system,” he said.
A couple of tips to avoid Chinese tracking of your data
Using DeepSeek, whether from the website or the mobile app, requires registration with an email or Chinese phone number. For obvious reasons, most international users will opt to log in via email. To mitigate potential tracking of your data, it is recommended to use a new email account with false information. This will potentially lead to surveillance and tracking by Beijing authorities in extreme cases.
Lastly, DeepSeek’s AI models are open source, which allows you to download and run them yourself. By doing this, you prevent your data from being saved and handled on Chinese servers.
