After the deepseek fire, the outlaws are taking advantage of the public's eagerness to look at ai technology and woven a double trap of trust and technology. According to statistics, within two months of the advent of deepseek, the number of fishing sites imitating deepseek has increased to almost 3,000。
In recent days, a journalist survey found that consumers had encountered a “ligen” app in the application store download of deepseek, which looked like deepseek, and had been tricked by “permanent members” for 198 dollars; some had mistook the so-called “local deployment” technique and paid $49 to download it to a fake installation package。
Deepseek has stated on previous occasions that all functions are entirely free of charge and that any item of fee is fraudulent. The only formal channels are the company's network of officials and application store-certified “deepseek-ai artificial intelligence assistant”, the developer of which can be traced back to hangzhou dept up。
Technical experts cautioned that the local deployment of deepseek had a dual threshold of computer hardware and computer knowledge and that there was no need for local deployment by ordinary users. Legal sources have pointed out that consumer vigilance is essential in the face of numerous acts of “harvest” consumers under the guise of deepseek or in violation of numerous legal provisions。
This crisis of confidence in ai is both a test of technical defence and a reminder of the urgency of public science。
Large numbers of consumers are locally deployed to “pits”
“the website is too authentic! I was fooled.” ms. Liu, an internet friend, said in an interview with a journalist。
According to ms. Liu's description, she saw in social media that bloggers had described the benefits of deploying deepseek locally, and had searched the search engine for plans, which had given links and had written “real download” “fast installation”. Ms. Liu selected one of the links for installation download, during which the software also appeared in the payment window and ms. Liu paid $49 without thought。
However, the eventual use of the interface puzzled ms. Liu, “i write ‘chatbox’, which i remember was not in the picture presented by the blogger. I went online again, and i looked at the experiences shared by other netizens before i knew i was in the game."
Ms. Liu's purchase of deepseek's local deployment software suffered from "not-for-good"
Recalling the experience of deception, ms. Liu said that the web site was extremely similar and that key words such as “deepseek installation” had appeared on the page several times during download installation, and it was only after payment that the embedded software had been downloaded that it could be clearly distinguished from deepseek。
"deepsek" provides a page called "deepseek local deployment" screenshot
The experience of ms. Liu is far from an example. On the complaints website and on various social platforms, it can be seen that a large number of other netizens have experienced similar frauds in their attempts to deploy deepseek locally, all of whom have entered the site by mistake, after searching for deepseek locally, at a loss of $49, $59 and $68 respectively。
There's a lot of internet users on the complaint website who've come across similar schemes while trying to deploy deepseek locally
There's a lot of deepseek sites on the search engine
The companies complained of were hubei’s recreational network technology company, wuhan shuntu information technology ltd., changzhou one network technology ltd., etc. The journalists searched and found that they were micro-enterprises, or were classified as “business irregularities” or in judicial cases。
Technical expert: general consumers do not really need to deploy locally
While emphasizing consumer awareness, industry experts generally noted that local deployments had hardware and technology thresholds and that ordinary users did not really need to deploy deepseek locally。
In interviews with journalists, the panel of experts on the information and communication economy of the ministry of industry and communications (dic) and lin mentioned that “local deployments are the downloading of the entire deepseek open source model to local servers and, in general, the desire of professional users to build their own home large models using open source models. There are two ways in which a fraud can cheat money: either using a fake program, a fake algorithm, to impersonate a deepseek open source model for a customer, or to find a free deepseek open source model, which is then sold to the user at a fee; or to convert the deepseek open source model into a large home-based model ap, which forms an application to charge the customer.”
In general, ordinary users do not deploy locally. The local deployment of large models requires some expertise to connect databases, set parameters and build operational environments. Local deployment has a high threshold for ordinary users, and it is generally the use of deepseek by professional large model companies to optimize home-based models。
The chief specialist of futurelabs future laboratory, hu yongping, suggested that ordinary consumers do not really need to deploy locally on mobile phones or computers, using either cloud-based services or some of the open-source deepseek reasoning model services that apple access. “these services are neither downloaded nor charged.”
In most cases, hu yanping mentioned, consumers faced a higher hardware threshold, “even if smaller models of 1. 5b, 7b, 8b, etc. Were downloaded, there was practically no fee; for models such as 14b, 32b, 70b, there was insufficient visible or unified memory of the general user computer, so that it was not operational, so it was not recommended; for models of 671b, consumer-level computers were less likely to run”
He added, “furthermore, some of the local deployments on the internet are not obvious frauds, but simply access to cloud services and provide the buyer with an account number, and do not really deploy models locally to users, although the harm is small, but amounts to money fraud”
“in any case, deepseek is free of charge, and it is a fraud to be careful of the charges.” hu yenping emphasizes。
There are many traps, and counsel reminds us that consumers must be vigilant, or have violated many legal provisions
There are not only the aforementioned local deployment-related scams but also a large number of counterfeit accounts, fishing websites, false courses, etc。
For consumers who don't know much about deepseek, there are many tricks. Mr. Bai stated that after hearing that deepseek had exploded, he was searching for similar keywords like “deepseek official” in a mobile phone application store, downloading the first-ranked and labelled “advertising” application and paying $198 to purchase permanent members. It was then after he had withdrawn from the application that he found out that his download was called "dreamdesk" and had nothing to do with deepseek。
Official ap for deepseek (left) and mr. Bai downloads a pip (central) and payment interface (right)
It should be noted that many consumers are still being ignored. In the comment page referred to by mr. Paik, entitled dream desk, journalists found that many consumers consider the software to be deepseek itself and have made evaluations such as "deepseek is too capable of doing "the light of china."。
According to the qianqin xlab laboratory report, a statistical analysis of the registration of domain names for the period from 1 december 2024 to 3 february 2025 revealed a total of 2,650 counterfeit deepseek sites during that period, which are still growing rapidly. These websites use similar domain names and interface designs to induce users to click, thereby spreading malicious software, stealing personal information or deceiving subscription fees。
Zianqin tested the registration time distribution of deepseek domain names
In addition, according to the website of the national computer emergency response centre, there has been the emergence of a mumma virus that simulates the official “deepseek” ap, which poses a significant threat to the privacy and economic interests of users。
Malicious app inducing users to authorize them to use accessibility
According to the senior partner of the shanghai dehantung law office, lawyer wei feng, such acts or violations of various legal provisions。
In accordance with article 57 of the trademarks law of the people's republic of china, the impersonation of deepseek's website and app uses deepseek's trademarks or similar labels, misleading consumers to regard these as official products of deepseek and constituting trademark infringement。
It is fraudulent to charge for “permanent membership” or “local deployment” but to provide no corresponding service or product. Under article 55 of the law of the people's republic of china on the protection of consumers' rights, which provides that an operator who fraudulently provides goods or services shall, at the request of the consumer, increase the amount of damages to the consumer by three times the price paid for the goods or the cost of receiving services。
In addition, the various traps downloaded around deepseek also violate laws such as the law of the people's republic of china on cyber security and the law of the people's republic of china on counter-telecommunication network fraud。
Ui feng suggested that consumers should first immediately stop using and unloading if they discovered that the downloaded aps were counterfeit, such as fraudulent applications with “permanent members” or “local deployments” as bait. This would prevent further economic loss or the disclosure of personal information。
Second, consumers can report false app and fishing websites in deepseek to market supervision, consumer protection organizations, internet regulators or the local police, providing detailed information, such as false ap names, download links, payment records or websites for fraudulent websites, to help the relevant authorities investigate and combat these illegal practices。
In addition, he suggested that consumers could seek legal assistance, consult professional lawyers and learn whether they could initiate proceedings to recover damages and defend their legitimate rights and interests if the loss was substantial or involved a greater consequence of the disclosure of personal information。
Wyfung stressed the importance of consumer vigilance, first, to select official channels for downloads, and to carefully check developers' information when downloading aps from the application store; and secondly, to avoid clicking on undefined links or downloading packages from unknown sources, such as the so-called “local deployment” false installation packages。
