DeepSeek Privacy Policy: What Data It Collects and What Users Should Know

Last verified: October 3, 2026

DeepSeek Privacy Policy last update: February 10, 2026.

The DeepSeek Privacy Policy says DeepSeek collects account information, prompts, uploaded content, chat history, device data, network data, approximate location from IP address, and other personal data when people use its apps, websites, software, and related services that link to the policy. It also says personal data is directly collected, processed, and stored in the People’s Republic of China to provide the services. You can read the official policy here: DeepSeek Privacy Policy.

This article is a plain-English explanation of DeepSeek’s published policy, not legal advice. The practical takeaway is simple: DeepSeek may be acceptable for low-sensitivity personal use if you understand the policy, but you should avoid pasting sensitive personal data, regulated data, client data, confidential business documents, passwords, API keys, or trade secrets unless your organization has reviewed and approved that use.

DeepSeek’s policy should be read together with its Terms of Use and its Model Mechanism and Training Methods page, especially if you care about model training, user inputs, outputs, account deletion, or business use.

Quick summary: what DeepSeek’s Privacy Policy says

DeepSeek’s official policy says the services are provided and controlled by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., with a registered address in China. The policy covers DeepSeek apps, websites, software, and related services that link to the policy. It does not automatically cover every downstream app built by developers using DeepSeek’s open platform services.

Question	Plain-English answer
Who controls the service?	Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., according to the official policy.
Does DeepSeek collect prompts?	Yes. The policy says DeepSeek may collect text input, voice input, prompts, uploaded files, photos, feedback, chat history, and other content provided to the model and services.
Does DeepSeek collect device or network data?	Yes. The policy lists IP address, device identifiers, device model, operating system, system language, crash reports, performance logs, and similar data.
Where is personal data stored?	The policy says personal data may be stored outside the user’s country and is directly collected, processed, and stored in the People’s Republic of China.
Can DeepSeek use data to improve models?	Yes. The policy says personal data may be used to improve and train DeepSeek’s technology, including machine learning models and algorithms.
Can users opt out of training use?	Yes. The policy lists a right to opt out of using personal data for training models or optimizing technologies.
Does DeepSeek say it sells personal data?	The policy says DeepSeek does not “sell” personal data and does not engage in targeted advertising or profiling that could have legal or similarly significant impact.
Should users enter sensitive data?	No. The policy says the services are not designed or intended to process sensitive personal data and users should not provide it.

What data DeepSeek says it collects

DeepSeek groups personal data into three broad categories: personal data you provide, automatically collected personal data, and personal data from other sources.

Personal data you provide

When you create an account, use the service, upload content, or contact DeepSeek, the policy says DeepSeek may collect:

Account data: date of birth where applicable, username, email address, phone number, and password.
User input: text input, voice input, prompts, uploaded files, photos, feedback, chat history, and other content provided to the model and services.
Outputs: responses generated based on your inputs.
Contact data: proof of identity or age, contact details, feedback, inquiries, or information related to possible policy violations.

The policy also says DeepSeek will not extract or mine voiceprint, facial recognition information, or other unique biological patterns used to identify a specific individual from the voice inputs or photos users provide.

Automatically collected data

DeepSeek says it automatically collects certain device, network, and usage information, including:

IP address.
Unique device identifiers.
Cookies and similar technologies.
Device model.
Operating system.
System language.
Crash reports and performance logs.
Device ID and user ID assigned automatically.
Features used and actions taken in the services.
Approximate location inferred from IP address.

DeepSeek says approximate location may be used for security, such as detecting unusual login activity, and to respond to location-related requests such as weather or local recommendations. The policy says DeepSeek will not obtain precise geolocation through other means without explicit consent.

Personal data from other sources

The policy also says DeepSeek may receive personal data from other sources, including third-party login services such as Apple or Google, security partners, and publicly available online sources. It says DeepSeek may obtain publicly available personal data via online sources to train models and provide services.

What DeepSeek says about sensitive personal data

DeepSeek says its services are not designed or intended to process sensitive personal data. The policy gives examples such as data revealing racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, health, sexuality, citizenship, immigration status, genetic or biometric data, personal data of children, precise geolocation, or criminal membership.

DeepSeek also says it does not ask users to provide sensitive personal data and that users should not provide sensitive personal data to the services, whether about themselves or other people.

In practice, do not paste medical records, IDs, passports, employee records, student records, client information, legal documents, financial statements, passwords, private keys, access tokens, or regulated business data into DeepSeek unless you have reviewed the policy and your organization has approved that use.

How DeepSeek says it uses your data

DeepSeek says it uses personal data to operate, provide, develop, and improve the services. The policy lists several purposes, including:

Creating accounts and providing login access.
Enabling users to chat with DeepSeek.
Providing user support.
Administering and maintaining the services.
Enforcing terms, conditions, and policies.
Improving and developing the services.
Training and improving DeepSeek technology, including machine learning models and algorithms.
Communicating service-related or commercial messages.
Preventing and detecting abuse, fraud, and illegal activity.
Troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, and research.
Complying with legal obligations or urgent safety requests when required.

The policy says DeepSeek does not engage in profiling or automated processing of personal data to make decisions that could have legal or similarly significant impact on users or others.

Does DeepSeek use chats to train models?

DeepSeek’s policy says personal data may be used to improve and train its technology, including machine learning models and algorithms. It also lists a right to opt out of using personal data for training models or optimizing technologies.

DeepSeek’s Terms of Use add more detail. They say DeepSeek may, under secure encryption technology processing, strict de-identification rendering, and irreversibility to identify specific individuals, use Inputs and Outputs to provide, maintain, operate, develop, or improve the services or underlying technologies. The Terms say users can opt out by turning off “Improve the model for everyone.”

DeepSeek’s Model Mechanism and Training Methods page gives additional context. It says DeepSeek’s pre-training phase uses public data and licensed data, and says pre-training does not require personal information. It also says optimization training may use a small portion of user input, with encryption, de-identification, and anonymization if user input is used to construct training data.

Practically, this means you should assume prompts and outputs may be processed for service operation and may be used to improve DeepSeek’s technology unless you use the available opt-out controls where applicable. Opting out of training use does not mean no data is processed at all; the service still needs to process inputs to provide the service.

Where DeepSeek stores personal data

DeepSeek’s Privacy Policy says the personal data it collects may be stored on servers outside the country where the user lives. It also says that, to provide the services, DeepSeek directly collects, processes, and stores personal data in the People’s Republic of China.

This is one of the most important points for U.S. readers and businesses. It does not automatically answer every legal, security, or compliance question, but it is a key review point for anyone with data-residency, regulated-data, client-confidentiality, government, education, healthcare, legal, or enterprise-security requirements.

DeepSeek also says that where required, it will use appropriate safeguards for transferring personal data outside certain countries in accordance with applicable data protection laws. The policy does not replace a business’s own vendor-risk review, data-processing review, or legal analysis.

How DeepSeek says it shares data

DeepSeek says it may share personal data with service providers, entities in its corporate group, parties involved in corporate transactions, law enforcement or parties with legal rights in limited scenarios, and third parties with user consent or authorization.

Recipient category	What the policy says	Practical meaning
Service providers	DeepSeek may share data with vendors that help provide, support, and develop the services.	Vendors may process personal data as part of operating the service.
Third-party APIs for search	DeepSeek says it integrates third-party APIs to provide search services and will share input keywords to provide those services.	Search-related prompts or keywords may be sent to third-party services when search features are used.
Corporate group	DeepSeek says certain corporate-group entities support the services and process data for functions such as storage, content delivery, security, R&D, model training and optimization, analytics, and support.	Data may be processed within DeepSeek’s corporate group for service and development purposes.
Law enforcement and legal requests	DeepSeek may access, preserve, and share personal data if it believes it is necessary to comply with law, legal process, government requests, or urgent safety situations.	Users should not assume data is immune from lawful requests.
Shared conversation links	Users may share Inputs and Outputs by generating a unique URL.	If a shared conversation is later published publicly, third parties may obtain it, including through crawlers.

The policy specifically recommends avoiding personal information, especially sensitive personal data, when using conversation-sharing features.

User rights and privacy choices

DeepSeek says users may have certain rights depending on where they live and subject to legal exceptions. Requests can be submitted by emailing [email protected].

The policy lists possible rights including:

The right to know whether and how DeepSeek processes personal data.
The right to access personal data.
The right to correct inaccurate personal data.
The right to delete personal data provided to DeepSeek or obtained about the user.
The right to receive a portable copy of personal data where available and technically feasible.
The right to opt out of targeted advertising, sale, or profiling that could have legal or similarly significant impact.
The right to opt out of using personal data for training DeepSeek models or optimizing technologies.

DeepSeek says it does not engage in targeted advertising, does not “sell” personal data, and does not use personal data for profiling or automated processing that could have legal or similarly significant impact.

Chat history and account deletion

The policy says users can manage some personal data directly through settings, including copying or deleting chat history. It also says that if a user deletes an account, the user will not be able to reactivate the account or retrieve content or personal data connected with that account.

The policy does not say that deleting chat history or an account instantly removes every retained copy in every situation. It also says DeepSeek retains personal data for as long as necessary for the services and policy purposes, and may retain data when necessary for contractual or legal obligations, legitimate business interests, safety, security, or legal claims.

DeepSeek App vs API and Open Platform privacy

The Privacy Policy includes an important distinction: it says personal data collected from end users when they access downstream systems or applications developed by developers using DeepSeek open platform services is not covered by this Privacy Policy.

In plain English: if a third-party developer builds an app using DeepSeek, that developer may be responsible for explaining how the app handles end-user personal data. You should review the app developer’s privacy policy as well as any DeepSeek policy that applies to DeepSeek’s own services.

Do not assume every DeepSeek-powered app follows the same privacy terms as the official DeepSeek app or website. For business use, this distinction matters because a product may involve both DeepSeek’s processing and the developer’s separate processing.

Privacy concerns and regulatory context

External privacy concerns around DeepSeek have focused heavily on data collection, storage in China, and government or enterprise device risk. These concerns should be separated from what DeepSeek’s own policy says.

In January 2025, the Associated Press reported that Italy’s data protection authority blocked access to DeepSeek while investigating the companies behind the chatbot over user data-protection concerns. AP: Italy blocks DeepSeek access

In March 2025, Reuters reported that some U.S. Commerce Department bureaus banned DeepSeek on government-issued devices for security reasons, based on sources and a directive to staff. Reuters: U.S. Commerce Department bureaus ban DeepSeek on government devices

In June 2025, Reuters reported that Germany’s data protection commissioner asked Apple and Google to remove DeepSeek from German app stores over concerns about data transfers to China. Reuters: Germany DeepSeek app-store privacy request

These reports do not mean every individual user faces the same risk. They do mean that privacy-conscious users, businesses, schools, public-sector organizations, and regulated industries should review DeepSeek carefully before using it with sensitive data.

Practical privacy checklist: what not to paste into DeepSeek

Use this checklist before pasting text, uploading files, or sharing chat links.

Do not paste passwords, API keys, access tokens, private keys, recovery codes, or authentication secrets.
Do not paste Social Security numbers, passport numbers, driver’s license numbers, tax IDs, or similar identity documents unless you fully understand the data handling and have a lawful reason.
Do not paste medical records, health details, therapy notes, genetic data, or other health-related sensitive information.
Do not paste financial records, bank statements, payment-card data, tax documents, or investment account details.
Do not paste legal documents, litigation strategy, privileged communications, or confidential contracts without approval.
Do not paste client data, customer tickets, student records, employee records, patient data, or regulated business data without organizational approval.
Do not paste unreleased source code, proprietary algorithms, trade secrets, internal roadmaps, credentials, or confidential product plans unless your organization has approved DeepSeek for that data class.
Do not share conversations publicly if they contain personal data, confidential business information, or information about other people.
Use chat history deletion, account deletion, and training opt-out settings where appropriate, but do not assume deletion instantly removes all retained copies unless the policy says so.
Use a work-approved AI tool for sensitive business, legal, medical, educational, government, or regulated data.
Review DeepSeek’s policy again after updates, because privacy terms can change.

Is DeepSeek safe to use for personal or work data?

The most accurate answer is not a simple “safe” or “unsafe.” It depends on the data, the user, the organization, and the risk tolerance.

Use case	Practical privacy view
Low-sensitivity personal questions	May be reasonable if you understand that prompts and usage data may be collected and processed under DeepSeek’s policy.
School or workplace tasks without sensitive data	Use caution and follow your school or employer’s AI policy.
Personal identity, health, financial, or legal data	Avoid unless you fully understand the policy and have a clear need.
Client, patient, employee, student, or regulated data	Do not use without formal organizational approval and legal/security review.
Source code and business secrets	Avoid unless DeepSeek has been approved for that data class and the relevant legal, security, and vendor-risk review is complete.
Government or public-sector data	Use only if permitted by the relevant agency policy and procurement/security review.

For business use, the safer approach is to treat DeepSeek as a vendor that needs legal, privacy, security, procurement, and data-processing review before sensitive or confidential data is allowed.

Common misconceptions about the DeepSeek Privacy Policy

Misconception	More accurate reading
“DeepSeek is open source, so it does not collect user data.”	Open model weights and the hosted DeepSeek service are different things. The Privacy Policy still describes data collection for the hosted services.
“DeepSeek never uses prompts for training.”	The policy says personal data may be used to train and improve DeepSeek technology, and users may opt out of training or optimization use.
“Deleting chat history always deletes every retained copy immediately.”	The policy allows users to manage chat history, but it also includes retention language for service, legal, safety, business, and rights-defense purposes.
“The DeepSeek Privacy Policy covers every DeepSeek-powered app.”	The policy says downstream apps built by developers using DeepSeek open platform services are not covered by this Privacy Policy for end-user data collected by those apps.
“DeepSeek stores data only in the U.S.”	The policy says DeepSeek directly collects, processes, and stores personal data in the People’s Republic of China.
“If I opt out of training, no data is processed at all.”	Training opt-out is not the same as stopping all processing. DeepSeek still processes data to provide, secure, maintain, and support the service.
“DeepSeek sells personal data.”	The policy says DeepSeek does not “sell” personal data and does not engage in targeted advertising or profiling with legal or similarly significant impact.

Frequently asked questions

What is the DeepSeek Privacy Policy?

It is DeepSeek’s official policy explaining how it collects, uses, shares, stores, protects, and retains personal data for DeepSeek apps, websites, software, and related services that link to the policy.

When was the DeepSeek Privacy Policy last updated?

The official policy page shows a last update date of February 10, 2026.

Who controls DeepSeek’s service?

The policy says the services are provided and controlled by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., with a registered address in China.

Does DeepSeek collect chat history?

Yes. The policy lists chat history as part of the user input or content DeepSeek may collect when people use the services.

Does DeepSeek collect uploaded files and photos?

Yes. The policy says DeepSeek may collect uploaded files, photos, voice input, prompts, feedback, and other content provided to the model and services.

Does DeepSeek store data in China?

Yes. The official Privacy Policy says DeepSeek directly collects, processes, and stores personal data in the People’s Republic of China to provide the services.

Does DeepSeek use my data to train models?

The policy says DeepSeek may use personal data to improve and train its technology, including machine learning models and algorithms. The policy also says users have the right to opt out of using personal data for training models or optimizing technologies.

How do I opt out of DeepSeek training use?

DeepSeek’s Terms of Use say users can opt out by turning off “Improve the model for everyone.” The Privacy Policy also says users may email [email protected] to exercise privacy rights, including opting out of training or optimization use.

Can I delete my DeepSeek chat history?

The policy says users can manage chat history through settings and may copy or delete chat history. It does not say that every retained copy is instantly removed in every situation.

What happens if I delete my DeepSeek account?

The policy says that if you delete your account, you will not be able to reactivate it or retrieve content or personal data connected with that account.

Does DeepSeek sell personal data?

DeepSeek’s policy says it does not “sell” personal data and does not engage in targeted advertising or profiling that could have legal or similarly significant impact.

Is DeepSeek safe for work data?

Do not use DeepSeek for confidential, regulated, client, employee, student, healthcare, legal, financial, government, or source-code-sensitive work data unless your organization has reviewed and approved that use. Businesses should review DeepSeek’s official policy, terms, data storage location, training settings, and any applicable data-processing or vendor-risk requirements.

Bottom line

The DeepSeek Privacy Policy is clear about several important points: DeepSeek collects prompts and other personal data, may use data to improve and train its technology, offers certain privacy rights and a training opt-out, warns users not to provide sensitive personal data, and says personal data is directly collected, processed, and stored in the People’s Republic of China.

For casual, low-sensitivity use, the main task is to understand the policy and avoid oversharing. For work, regulated, confidential, or sensitive data, the safer approach is to wait for formal approval from legal, privacy, security, or compliance teams before using DeepSeek.