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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
National
Byron Tau

Researchers say China's DeepSeek chatbot is linked to state telecom, raising data privacy concerns

Deepseek China Security - (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The website of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, security researchers say.

The web login page of DeepSeek’s chatbot contains heavily obfuscated computer script that when deciphered shows connections to computer infrastructure owned by China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company. The code appears to be part of the account creation and user login process for DeepSeek.

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