There’s a wry irony to the timing of the DeepSeek furor. It comes just as we’re hitting peak TikTok, with speculation now rife as to who might buy the platform’s U.S. business to keep it from being shuttered (again). China doesn’t care about TikTok in the way it cares about Huawei and other strategically important technologies. It cares about DeepSeek, though, because that’s a real threat where TikTok is a distraction.
So, as this new Chinese AI app continues its ride atop Apple’s App Store, the question is whether it’s safe to install and use on your iPhone. And here there are some real parallels with TikTok. It’s not the app that’s the issue — it’s what the platform behind the app does with your data that matters.
DeepSeek has an everything, everywhere privacy policy that is readily available. It’s not even couched in hard-to-read legalese. The fact it takes all your data and sends it to China is written in plain English. Consequently, the app’s actual tracking data is relatively constrained. It pulls data from your phone but says it doesnt link this to your phone-level ID. But it doesn’t really need to. The value is in the information you give the app when you open an account, the prompts you send and any data you upload. All of this it can take and send to China. And it can keep it all forever.
DeepSeek says it keeps your information “for as long as necessary,” and that “we also retain information when necessary to comply with contractual and legal obligations.” This needs to be read alongside the other key clause, that “we store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
So, to the question. Is this app safe to install on your iPhone. As an app, it looks fine as far as we know. Security issues seem to be at the platform level not at the app level to this point. It certainly seems more constrained — as an app — than any of the social media, Chinese or otherwise, that you’re already running.
Should you use it, though? That’s a different question. I’ve warned users to be careful, because this is the very epitome of the AI data leakage risk that all platforms carry and which is little understood. AI is catnip for users, and the latest tools and toys are being used with little thought to the consequences. That’s as relevant to Google or Microsoft adding AI to all their productivity apps as it is to DeepSeek. TikTok’s issues did not make Facebook any safer, to run the parallel example.
If you are using the app, check the privacy permissions regularly and don’t give it access to your microphone or camera if it ever asks. Don’t upload any sensitive files or images. Don’t allow access to any sensitive part of your phone if asked — open access to photos, for example. And remember the prompts you send are all being stored and can then ne analyzed or shared at will. In short — be careful.
