Your DeepSeek Chats May Have Been Exposed Online
DeepSeek is having a moment: with the release of the impressive R1, the AI company has overtaken ChatGPT (and every other app) to become the number one free app in both the iOS App Store and Google Play Store. However, if you tried the app this week, be aware that your chats may have been exposed.
As reported by The Hacker News , DeepSeek left one of its online databases open. Although the company has released a fix, this database is a treasure trove of user information. It contains over a million lines of log streams, including chat history, secret keys (used to encrypt and decrypt data), server information, and other important data.
As of this writing , DeepSeek says it is continuing to investigate the issue despite having a fix on January 29th.
It is unclear if any parties gained access to the DeepSeek database while it was vulnerable, but the vulnerability allowed “full control of the database” as well as privilege escalation within the DeepSeek network without the need for any authentication.
DeepSeek’s privacy and security policies are a matter of concern as so many users are flocking to its services. The platform collects a lot of user data such as email addresses, IP addresses and chat histories, as well as more sensitive data such as keystroke patterns and rhythms. Why would an AI application need to know not only what I typed, but also how I typed it? Since DeepSeek is a Chinese company, it stores all user data on servers in China. As such, the company is required by law to provide any data requested by the Chinese government. This practice is one of the reasons why the US government banned TikTok .
There is no evidence that this happened, but the whole situation paints a shaky picture for the popular artificial intelligence startup. If you want to try DeepSeek or are already using it, it’s important to keep these points in mind. With that particular company, your user data may not be as secure.