German data protection commissioner Meike Kamp stated that DeepSeek’s transfer of user data to China is ‘unlawful’.
A German data protection official has said that Chinese AI app DeepSeek illegally transfers user data to China, and has asked Google and Apple to consider blocking the app in the country.
Meike Kamp, the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, released a statement today (27 June) where she said that DeepSeek facilitates the “unlawful” transfer of personal data collected from users to Chinese data processors and stores it on servers in China.
As a result, Kamp has informed Google and Apple, requesting that the tech giants consider blocking the app on their app stores in Germany.
“The transfer of user data by DeepSeek to China is unlawful. DeepSeek has not been able to provide my office with convincing evidence that data of German users is protected in China at a level equivalent to that of the European Union,” wrote Kamp in today’s statement.
“Chinese authorities have extensive access rights to personal data held by Chinese companies. In addition, DeepSeek users in China do not have enforceable rights and effective legal remedies as guaranteed in the European Union.
“I have therefore informed Google and Apple, as operators of the largest app platforms, of the violations and expect a prompt review of a blocking.”
DeepSeek shook up the AI world at the beginning of this year after releasing its large language model R1, which performs on par with industry heavyweights such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet models. The open-source model sent Silicon Valley into a frenzy, especially since the Chinese start-up claimed that R1 was considerably cheaper to train when compared with its competitors.
However, not long after the start-up took the AI spotlight, the data watchdogs of numerous countries – including Ireland – began investigating the company over privacy concerns, particularly due to the start-up’s storage of user data in servers located in China.
At the end of January, Italy blocked the app from the country’s app stores due to privacy concerns.
Amid the app’s surge in popularity, DeepSeek briefly halted new registrations on its AI platform in January due to “large scale malicious attacks” on its services.
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