3.24.19
I first heard about datapigging from my friend Alex. I was working at a vintage clothes store on Milwaukee Avenue. On Saturdays it was my job to sift through the laundry baskets full of sweat-stained graphic tees and other junk we couldn’t resell that people brought into the store. Occasionally, I’d be digging and stumble upon a real find, a vintage NHL jersey or a nice Theory blouse. I’d set the useful pieces aside and slide the still-full baskets back across the counter toward their disappointed owners.
“I started doing this thing,” Alex told me after work one Saturday, at the bar we always went to. He’d worked at record stores before his latest one shut down. I had a vague idea that he’d been doing some freelance work to make money since then, but hadn’t asked about it. “Have you ever heard of this company, Horizont?” I shook my head. The bar owner’s pug, Sheila, limped past us. She had cataracts in both eyes that made her look like a ghost dog, or like some squat, furry zombie. She creeped me the fuck out.
“So they’re this big tech company, right,” Alex continued. “But the way they make their money isn’t by doing anything public-facing. They sell user data to other tech companies — Facebook, Google, et cetera. And the way they get that data is…” Alex reached down and rolled up the right leg of his jeans, revealing a small, flat black band circling his ankle. “Bam!”
The band looked like one of those rubber resistance bands I’d seen people use at the gym, only a little sturdier. It didn’t light up or have any kind of display. The bottom of the band bore a small, machine-stitched insignia: HORIZONT LLC.
“Listen, if you’re in some kind of trouble—”
Alex laughed. “Nah, it’s not like that. They call it being a Data Processing Integration Guarantor. But everyone who does it calls it datapigging.”