For the Love of God, Don't Use Deepseek
Why routing your prompts through chat.deepseek.com can hand DeepSeek broad rights over your inputs and outputs — and the safer ways to run the same open models.
I cannot count the times I had to inform technical and non-technical people not to use DeepSeek models through the DeepSeek main page.
Mind you, the technical people are line managers and engineers with 10-20 years in software engineering.
So, I am writing this article not to repeat myself (and redirect people to this article every time this is brought up)
If you value having control over your data and its outputs, it is essential to know that using chat.deepseek.com may give DeepSeek rights to your text entries and the resulting outputs.
According to DeepSeek’s official Terms of Use, in Section 5: Intellectual Property, it states:
“5.1 DeepSeek is the developer and operator of this service and holds all rights within the scope permitted by laws and regulations to this service (including but not limited to software, technology, programs, code, model weights, user interfaces, web pages, text, graphics, layout designs, trademarks, electronic documents, etc.), including but not limited to copyrights, trademark rights, patent rights, and other intellectual property rights. However, this excludes rights that relevant rights holders are entitled to under legal provisions or the terms of this agreement (such as Inputs and Outputs).
5.2 Without our permission, you or your end users shall not use any trademarks, service marks, trade names, domain names, website names, company logos (LOGOs), URLs, or other prominent brand features related to the Services, including but not limited to 'DeepSeek,' etc., in any way, either singly or in combination. You are not allowed to display, use, or apply for registration of trademarks, domain names, etc., related to the aforementioned terms in any way, and you shall not perform acts that expressly or implicitly indicate the right to display, use, or otherwise deal with these identifiers to others.”
Using DeepSeek through OpenRouter keeps your data firmly in your hands. By going through OpenRouter, you can ensure that the Intellectual property rights related to your inputs and outputs remain with you. This choice helps you avoid any unintended loss of control over your data.
