Short answer
DeepSeek isn’t equally private across every product or deployment. Its English privacy policy says that covered personal data—including prompts and chat history—is processed and stored in China. The policy also describes a right to opt out of using personal data to train models or optimize technology, and says some data, including inputs, may be kept as long as you have an account. Whether that fits your needs depends on the service, the data, and your privacy requirements. (cdn.deepseek.com)
For public, low-sensitivity questions, you may decide that handling acceptable. For confidential business information, personal data, customer records, credentials, or regulated information, don’t assume a hosted service or API is suitable: check the terms for the specific product and get the required organizational review. Self-hosting changes who operates the infrastructure, but does not automatically make a deployment private, secure, or compliant.
Hosted DeepSeek, API, and self-hosting are different choices
- App or website: DeepSeek’s English privacy policy applies to the apps, websites, software, and related services that link to or reference it. It says DeepSeek may collect inputs such as prompts, uploaded files, photos, feedback, and chat history, plus some account and device/network information. (
cdn.deepseek.com) - Production API: DeepSeek’s Open Platform Terms, effective April 29, 2026, apply to API and other developer tools. The privacy policy says it does not cover personal-data processing for end users in downstream applications built by developers using the open platform; it assigns the developer operating that application responsibility for disclosing its relevant privacy rules. That exclusion does not, by itself, explain all data handling for a direct API account or settle every API-specific protection. (
cdn.deepseek.com) - Self-hosted model: This is different from sending requests to DeepSeek’s hosted service. It may give your team more control over infrastructure and data flow, but your team then has to secure the environment, access, logs, and backups, and verify that the deployment does not send data elsewhere.
What DeepSeek’s published policy says
The English privacy policy says it was last updated February 10, 2026. It covers DeepSeek apps, websites, software, and related services that link to or reference it. It identifies Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd. as the service provider and data controller. (cdn.deepseek.com)
Inputs and model improvement: The policy lists prompts and other user-provided content among the information it may collect. It also describes a right to opt out of using personal data for model training or technology optimization. The policy excerpts available here do not establish whether that opt-out works the same way for every product or API account, so confirm its availability for your particular use before relying on it. (cdn.deepseek.com)
Location: The policy says DeepSeek directly collects, processes, and stores covered personal data in the People’s Republic of China. Treat this as the policy’s statement about services within its scope; the policy separately excludes personal-data processing for end users in developer-operated downstream applications. (cdn.deepseek.com)
Retention and deletion: The policy says it keeps personal data used to provide services—including account, input, and payment data—as long as the user has an account. It also says users can manage chat history and may copy or delete that history through settings. The published wording retrieved here does not establish how deleting chat history affects other retained records, backups, or API logs. (cdn.deepseek.com)
Sharing and API-specific terms: The excerpts cited above do not establish all sharing or subprocessor details, nor do they settle API-specific retention, training, or deletion protections. The Open Platform Terms establish their scope and relationship to other applicable agreements and policies, but the material reviewed here does not resolve those data-handling questions for every API use. Check the terms and privacy documents for the exact account, integration, and data flow rather than assuming app settings apply to API traffic. (cdn.deepseek.com)
Production API: a privacy check before launch
Before sending real user or business data through a DeepSeek API workflow:
- Identify the service and applicable terms. Distinguish direct API use from a third-party application or gateway, and review the documents that apply to each.
- Confirm the destination. Check your application and any gateway or model router to see which provider receives each request; verify the actual configuration rather than assuming.
- Ask about API-specific protections. Confirm retention, deletion, training use or opt-out, location, and any contractual commitments for the exact API account. The published consumer-policy language and API terms reviewed here do not resolve all of these API-specific questions.
- Check logs and minimize data. Find out what request-level logs are kept, who can access them, and for how long. Remove secrets and unnecessary personal details; use synthetic or redacted examples for testing.
- Hold sensitive data until requirements are clear. If you require a specific region, retention limit, deletion commitment, training exclusion, or contract term, obtain confirmation for the product and account before using that data.
Example: Testing a summarization workflow on public sample text is a different decision from sending customer conversations with names and account details. For the latter, confirm the applicable terms, destination, logging, retention, and internal approval before launch.
Which option makes sense for sensitive information?
- Public or low-sensitivity content: Hosted use may fit if the applicable terms and your organization’s policy allow it. Avoid including information you would not want handled under those terms.
- Confidential or personal
data:Pause until reviewers approve the specific service and data flow. If required protections or data-location terms are unclear, don’t send the data. - More infrastructure control: Evaluate self-hosting if the model and license support your use. It can change where inference runs and who controls the environment, but it shifts operational and security responsibilities to your team; it is not a privacy guarantee.
Privacy concerns how information is collected, used, shared, and retained. Security concerns protecting systems and data from unauthorized access. Neither self-hosting nor a security measure alone proves compliance with a law or contract. For regulated data or binding obligations, get advice based on the actual product, deployment, and use case.
Bottom line: You can’t determine whether DeepSeek is private from the model name alone. The published policy says covered personal data is processed and stored in China, sets out account-based retention for certain data, and provides chat-history controls and a training opt-out right. API-specific protections and downstream-app responsibilities need separate review. Decide based on the channel, the data, and documented terms and controls. For a separate overview of API capabilities, see the DeepSeek API guide.