According to the South Korean Personal Information Protection Committee, as of January 31, 2025, the personal information of 1.21 million South Korean DeepSeek users had been transferred to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. The South Korean government has since banned downloads of the DeepSeek app, making South Korea the second country after Italy to ban DeepSeek.
The Personal Information Commission discovered that personal information was being exfiltrated to ByteDance during the confirmation process of DeepSeek’s network connection records. According to the Korean Domestic Personal Information Protection Law, one must specifically obtain informed consent from users when providing information to third parties; DeepSeek did not comply with this legal requirement.
American cybersecurity company Feroot Security deciphered DeepSeek’s code and confirmed that DeepSeek hides the ability to send user information to China Mobile, a state-owned communications company. DeepSeek even obtains the user’s keyboard usage patterns and does not allow the user to refuse collection of the user’s personal information.
Source: Chosun Chinese, February 18, 2025
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