The YouTuber David Bombal’s recent investigation has raised some concerns about the data privacy practices of DeepSeek, a powerful AI developed in China that disrupted the AI global market.
In the past few days, DeepSeek has undergone scrutiny from a lot of sources. Because of the hype it created, our local government agencies, DICT and DOST, issued a warning regarding the use of AI assistants without proper knowledge of how to do so safely.
In other reports, the Australian government banned the use of the Chinese AI Assistant on all of its employees’ devices and it has also been accused of using OpenAI’s data to build the model. Moreover, it has also been banned in Italy and Taiwan. So this raises the question, is DeepSeek safe?
DeepSeek – Where’s our Data Being Transmitted to?
In this experiment done by YouTuber David Bombal, an Android phone connected to the internet via an Ethernet cable and disabled Wi-Fi captured all network traffic. This traffic was monitored using Wireshark, a network protocol analyzer.
The test aimed to investigate whether DeepSeek was transmitting information to servers in the country despite claiming not to send user data to China. The results were concerning.
- Traffic to Beijing: When DeepSeek was activated, the phone immediately began sending data packets to servers in Beijing, China.
- Alibaba Cloud Connection: Furthermore, traffic was also directed to Alibaba Cloud, a Chinese cloud computing service provider.
- Inconsistent Responses: When directly asked if user data was being sent to China, DeepSeek consistently denied it, even though the network traffic analysis demonstrated otherwise.
These findings raise serious questions about DeepSeek’s data privacy claims and the potential for user data to be transmitted to servers located in China. This is particularly concerning given the increasing scrutiny of Chinese technology companies and their data handling practices.
This example serves as an important reminder of the value of data privacy and the need for AI developers to be transparent about their data handling procedures. Users should be aware of the risks involved with AI applications and use caution when sharing personal information.
Started his freelancing adventure in 2018 and began doing freelance Audio Engineering work and then started freelance writing a few years later.
Currently he writes for Gadget Pilipinas and Grit.PH.
He is also a musician, foody, gamer, and PC enthusiast.
