On January 28, Garante, Italy's data protection agency, announced that it had requested information from the startup DeepSeek regarding its use of users' personal data.

Authorities want to know what data DeepSeek collects, from what sources, for what purpose, on what legal basis, and where it is stored.

DeepSeek and its affiliates have 20 days to respond.

deepseek shutterstock
DeepSeek's AI application is no longer accessible on Apple and Google stores in Italy. Photo: Shutterstock

In the US, the White House press secretary shared that authorities are reviewing DeepSeek's national security implications. The Irish Data Protection Commission has also sent a request to DeepSeek to learn about its handling of data relating to Irish users.

On January 29th, DeepSeek's app became inaccessible on Apple and Google app stores in Italy. When searching, users saw a message indicating the app was unavailable in the region or not supported.

Those who have already downloaded the app can still use it. Other countries in the European Union and the UK are not affected.

Last week, DeepSeek released a free AI assistant app that the company claims to have developed at a much lower cost than its competitors.

Over the weekend, the app surpassed ChatGPT in downloads on the US App Store, causing panic among tech stock investors. A few days later, the Android version also topped the Google Play rankings in the US.

According to app analytics firm AppFigures, since its launch in mid-January, DeepSeek's app has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times on Google Play and more than 1.9 million times on the App Store globally.

DeepSeek's strong rise in the rankings demonstrates its formidable competitiveness against Western services from Meta, OpenAI, and Google.

Essentially, the application is quite similar to ChatGPT, developed based on the open-source DeepSeek V3 model. It is used for file analysis, answering questions, and retrieving information from the web.

However, its security capabilities remain questionable. Cloud security firm Wiz recently released a report showing that DeepSeek exposed one of its most important databases on the internet.

Anyone can view a total of over 1 million records, including system login history, user prompts, and even API authentication tokens.

About half an hour after Wiz sent the information to those potentially connected to DeepSeek, and despite receiving no response, the aforementioned database was locked and became inaccessible.

Wiz's Chief Technology Officer, Ami Luttwak, advises that "the service is not yet mature enough to be used with sensitive data."

According to CNBC , the US Navy has warned all personnel against downloading, installing, and using DeepSeek's model due to potential ethical and security concerns.

(According to Wired and TechCrunch)