South Korea blocks access to Deepseek, citing privacy laws– BC

South Korea is the last governing body that restricts the Chinese Deepseek company based on company’s data policies.

South Korean officials on Saturday announced A temporary suspension of downloading the Deepseek application until it complies with local data protection laws under the country’s personal information protection law.

After analyzing the application policies, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) “identified some communication functions and personal information processing policies with external service providers,” according to a press release translated from Korean to English. The PIPC said it will unlock the downloads in local application stores once Depseek “meets the requirements of national protection laws.”

Depseeks broke into the AI ​​scene in January with an advanced reasoning chatbot that was free, open source, and made a fraction of the cost of popular models such as Openi’s O1. But its privacy policy was equally journalistic interest since the company collects extensive user data and stores them in servers in China, which makes it accessible to the Chinese government in accordance with local laws.

The countries quickly took note and gave the alarm on the protection of data and national security risks, given the state of China as a foreign adversary. Ireland and Italy have sent consultations requesting more information about Deepseek’s policies, and Italy has subsequently blocked downloads. Australia He also recently prohibited the use of Deepseek on government devices. From the appearance of Deepseek, Federal Legislation of the United States It has been introduced to prohibit Deepseek into government devices and New York and Texas have already moved to do the same in their respective state legislation.

Back in South Korea, the announcement said that users who have already downloaded Depseek will still have access, but they told users to “use the application with caution” and do not enter personal information.