ASSUME THAT ALL SOFTWARE AND SERVICES FROM COMMUNIST CHINA ARE SPYWARE AND YOU WON’T OFTEN BE WRONG: DeepSeek ‘shared user data’ with TikTok owner ByteDance.

South Korea has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of sharing user data with the owner of TikTok in China.

“We confirmed DeepSeek communicating with ByteDance,” the South Korean data protection regulator told Yonhap News Agency.

The country had already removed DeepSeek from app stores over the weekend over data protection concerns.

The Chinese app caused shockwaves in the AI world in January, wiping billions off global stock markets over claims its new model was trained at a much lower cost than US rivals such as ChatGPT.

Since then, multiple countries have warned that user data may not be properly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity company alleged potential data sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.

DeepSeek’s apparent overnight impact saw it shoot to the top of App Store charts in the UK, US and many other countries around the world – although it now sits far below ChatGPT in UK rankings.

In South Korea, it had been downloaded over a million times before being pulled from Apple and Google’s App Stores on Saturday evening.

If you downloaded DeepSeek (or TikTok, for that matter), you might want to delete it.