Italy Blocks DeepSeek Over Data Privacy Concerns

Italy's data protection agency has blocked the Chinese AI chatbot DeekSeek after its developers failed to disclose how it collects user data or whether it is stored on Chinese servers. Reuters reports: DeepSeek could not be accessed on Wednesday in Apple or Google app stores in Italy, the day after the authority, known also as the Garante, requested information on its use of personal data. In particular, it wanted to know what personal data is collected, from which sources, for what purposes, on what legal basis and whether it is stored in China. The authority's decision -- aimed at protecting Italian users' data -- came after the Chinese companies that supply chatbot service to DeepSeek provided information that "was considered to totally insufficient," the authority said in a note on its website. The Garante added that the decision had "immediate effect" and that it had also opened an investigation. Thanks to new submitter axettone for sharing the news.

Re: The U.S. will also block it for "privacy conce

[crackpot]

Never mind that Openai stole/steals consumer data to train their modelâ¦no privacy concerns here because reasons.

Re: The U.S. will also block it for "privacy conce

[anonymouscoward52236]

What if I already downloaded it and plan on redistributing to anyone who wants it?

Re:

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Quite simple, really, in the case that people are doing with something that you distribute, the compliance to the data protection requirements, at least in the EU, will be on you.

Re:

[martin-boundary]

Just rename the file to anonymouscoward52236-deepseekerson-AI-v0.12 before you redistribute it, nobody will know where it came from!

There goes that idea

[Dan East]

I was just about to put in my email addresses and passwords and ask DeepSeek if it thought they were good ones or not.

Re:

[iAmWaySmarterThanYou]

Don't worry. It already has them.

Re:

[ChunderDownunder]

When I went to their website they offered me to register using my Google credentials.

So the trick of this 21st century cold war then is to give your private details to both neo-colonial superpowers. :)

data collection

[ZipNada]

All of the mobile apps I use try to acquire data from my phone and send it off to data brokers. I see it in the report of the blocker.

Its very likely that all the shopping sites sell your purchase history and even your patterns of website use to anyone that will pay enough. Not at all surprising that the AI companies will make maximum use of your interactions and your personal info. Eventually they will want to rent you an agent that learns enough to serve in your place in many situations. Your entire life will be on autopilot.

Re: data collection

[dknj]

I would like to know the mobile device and application which blocks and reports on what it has blocked.

Letâ(TM)s face it, the open source operating systems donâ(TM)t match the maturity of iOS or even android. So Iâ(TM)m hard pressed to believe this is a viable solution. That said, I am interested as I do have the ability to execute privacy centric tasks. To extend this to mobile is highly intriguing to me

Re:

[ZipNada]

On an Android phone, install the duckduckgo app. Then go to settings and enable app tracking protection.

It installs a VPN local to your phone which filters all outgoing traffic and blocks anything to known data brokers. Gives a nice report too.

Re:

[Teun]

An excellent tip.
One of the reasons DuckDuckGo is my browser.

It appears that this is legit

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Here's how deeply DeepSeek cares about user privacy:

https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]

a New York-based infosec house, says that shortly after the DeepSeek R1 model gained widespread attention, it began investigating the machine-learning outfit's security posture. What Wiz found is that DeepSeek – which not only develops and distributes trained openly available models but also provides online access to those neural networks in the cloud – did not secure the database infrastructure of those services.

That means conversations with the online DeepSeek chatbot, and more data besides, were accessible from the public internet with no password required.

So, it appears to be the case of a government agency actually doing their job for a change.

True, mostly irrelevant.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It seems hard to argue with the idea that anyone who trusts DeepSeek with anything important is a fool; even if you like their privacy policy and jurisdiction their security practices are known to be terrible; but that really seems like a footnote when their significance is largely in providing a model open and computationally cheap enough that you simply don't have to trust them because you can just go do your own thing with it.

Sure, that's not helpful to the lost and the damned whose shiny little herme

Re:

[Mal-2]

The 1.5b model that is offered separately from R1 (although also represented within R1) does run on a phone, so this is even going to trickle down to the people who only compute on a phone.

you can't protest on an iPhone

[diffract]

Because you don't own the device and sideloading is not allowed