Data Dead-Drops

You’ve just found data you shouldn’t have access to. Men in grey suits are coming to kill you. What do you do? YouCom identified a new viral craze with the answer. Data dead-drops.

Imagine the scene. Highly sensitive files, the sort of data that Hollywood tells us attracts men in grey suits ready to kill. Where do you offload it? A new viral craze has the answer. A media artist, Aram Bartholl, created ‘data dead-drops’. USB sticks embedded in walls all around the city, all around the world. Peer-to-peer file sharing in the physical world in true Banksy style.

YouCom has found the idea is spreading, growing to 1,500 dead-drop locations worldwide. It allows for anonymous, offline, file-sharing as a new kind of social network. If you have some homework or coursework for a friend, leave it in the wall by the side of Starbucks. Possibilities are endless and a new form of media sharing is born.

USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and even curbs! Accessible to anybody in public space. Aram Bartholl invites everyone to take part and drop or find files on a dead drop. Each dead drop is installed empty except a readme.txt file explaining the project. If you want to install a dead drop in your city or neighbourhood follow the ‘how to’ instructions and submit the location and pictures.

To find out more, watch this upbeat video https://vimeo.com/16620712 or follow these instructions https://deaddrops.com/dead-drops/participate/

And don’t forget to Tweet YouCom Media about what you uploaded and where.

To reference data from this article, please use: ‘YouCom Media News, Mar 2015, London, ‘Peer-to-peer file sharing goes viral.’