Is DeepSeek safe to use?

By George Phillips for Tom's Guide
Tuesday, January 28, 2025

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DeepSeek has enjoyed quite the wild ride over the last few days. The Chinese AI platform exploded onto the scene last week, jumping to number one in the App Store's free apps list and tanking Nvidia and Google stocks.

Commenting on the attack and potential vulnerabilities, Dr Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of web security company ImmuniWeb, said: “Without further technical information from DeepSeek about the incident, it would be premature to make conclusions about the alleged attack. It is not completely excluded that DeepSeek simply could not handle the legitimate user traffic due to insufficiently scalable IT infrastructure, while presenting this unforeseen IT outage as a cyber-attack."

"A formal investigation report by DeepSeek will likely bring clarity about the incident. Most importantly, this incident indicates that while many corporations and investors are obsessed with the ballooning AI hype, we still fail to address foundational cybersecurity issues despite having access to allegedly super-powerful GenAI technologies. An overall disappointment in GenAI technologies is possible in 2025.”

When asked if there was a threat to DeepSeek's users, Dr Kolochenko believed "under the currently disclosed set of facts, there is no reason to believe that end users may be at risk, however, a formal incident investigation report is needed before making a final determination."

Warnings surrounding DeepSeek are not just being issued by cybersecurity experts. Future Publishing – Tom's Guide's parent company – has issued an official warning about using DeepSeek on mobile devices. Read Full Article