The website of artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that is blocked in the United States, security researchers say.
The DeepSeek chatbot login page contains script that, when decrypted, shows connections to infrastructure owned by China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company. The code appears to be part of the DeepSeek user account creation and login process.
In its privacy policy, DeepSeek acknowledges that it stores data on servers within the People's Republic of China.
But its chatbot appears to be much more directly linked to the Chinese state than previously known through the code the researchers uncovered. The US alleges close ties between China Mobile and the Chinese military, which it uses as justification for imposing restrictive sanctions on the company.
Code linking DeepSeek to one of China's top mobile carriers discovered for the first time by Feroot Security, a Canadian cybersecurity company, which shared the her findings with the Associated Press.
The AP took Feroot's findings to a second team of experts, who independently confirmed that China Mobile code was present. Neither Feroot nor the other researchers observed data being transferred to China Mobile during their tests in North America, but they could not rule out that some users' data was being transferred to the Chinese state-owned company.
The analysis only applies to the web version of DeepSeek. They did not analyze the mobile version, which remains one of the most downloaded software on both the Apple and Google App Stores.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission unanimously denied China Mobile permission to operate in the United States in 2019, citing “substantial” national security concerns about the company’s ties to the Chinese state. In 2021, the Biden administration issued more sanctions restricting Americans’ ability to invest in China Mobile after the Pentagon linked it to the Chinese military.
“It’s strange that we unknowingly allow China to investigate Americans and do nothing about it,” said Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot.
"It's hard to believe that something like this is a coincidence. There are so many unusual things about it. You know that saying, 'Where there's smoke, there's fire'? In this case, there's a lot of smoke," Tsarynny said.
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
All of this is solved if you download it and run it on your own machine without internet.
If you use Chinese AI, your data will go to the Chinese while you use it online, the same thing happens if you use ChatGPT with Americans.
And neither is less shady than the other. Trust in big tech doesn't exist personally.
Most people use the full suite of Google and Meta. Some also use ChatGPT. Is the data safe there?
Look for lawsuits that were started over a misunderstanding that happened in Google Photos and judge for yourself. Look for Meta scandals to laugh a little.
At least the Chinese have open source that you can download and see what it does. OpenAI later remembered to release open source as well.
It is at least hypocritical to blame only one side.