DeepSeek blocked on Apple and Google app stores in Italy and other countries

A week after its launch, DeepSeek has already been blocked in some countries. The first to block DeepSeek are Italy and Ireland. The app can no longer be downloaded from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store in Italy and Ireland.

Even though DeepSeek became a sensation overnight and surpassed ChatGPT in downloads on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, its data harvesting policies cannot be ignored. DeepSeek, like many other Chinese apps, harvests user data. In this case, the IP address, along with chats of users, is also being collected by DeepSeek. This could be one of the reasons why the app may find it difficult to sustain outside China.

Regulators in Rome have demanded answers from the company about how it handles user data. “Our office will launch an in-depth investigation to see if GDPR rules [European Union data protection regulations] are being respected,” said Pasquale Stanzione, head of the Italian data regulator, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

A spokesperson for the Irish Data Protection Commission in Dublin has also “written to DeepSeek requesting information on the data processing conducted in relation to data subjects in Ireland,” The Guardian reports.