Normally not worth the deck slot - it's nice, but there's stronger stuff you could include instead. However, it did some serious work in Jinteki: Potential Unleashed, much to my surprise. I really underestimated this card. PU grind games are won or lost by how much you disrupt their setup, and well, it's one more net damage for free, isn't it? With the value of each hit being (actually more than) doubled, you can get a lot out of these with some recursion. Wouldn't consider it in any other IDs at the moment.

• Great deterrent if the runner isn't stable yet, or if you're getting close to decking them. Punches above its weight of 0 in intimidation factor.

• If they haven't seen it yet, they'll often assume it's a DNA Tracker or other "real" ICE and hang back.

• Provides yet another tool for creating no-win situations. Use it as a solo ICE to punish running your must-trash assets such as Museum of History or Hostile Infrastructure, or score an early House of Knives behind it. If they run it, well, you're two cards closer to winning, and maybe you hit something important of theirs.

• Has the slight possiblity of aiding kills, maybe after a Komainu or before a Snare.

• Eventually, 90% of my Data Mines end up firing, so they can be considered basically as extra Shocks. I know I'd run more Shocks if I could.

• Dies to AIs, but currently that mostly means Faust - spending cards anyway! - or Atman 2 - sort of a waste of Atman. At some point they'll probably just let it fire because the tax is annoying.

Pros

• net damage can be pretty disruptive to the runner
• it is nearly unpreventable as it can only be broken via AI-breakers

Cons

• one time use only
• the windows of usefulness seem to be pretty narrow

Thoughts

• has an obvious Combo with Chum
• but you might need ice re-arranging tricks like Sunset, Midori or Tenma Line afterwards, otherwise wasting Chum seems unjustified
• along the same lines, I think it is best to be stacked with more net damage
• this doesn't need to be in the form of more Ice though: Rezzing Data Mine in front of R&D while the runner has exactly 3 cards in hand, turns a "safe" Snare! into a flatline, especially while using The Maker's Eye or such
• This gets more dangerous when running Fetal AI with Jinteki: Personal Evolution, because you now have up to 6 cards dealing 3 net damage from R&D (or HQ)
• When the runner runs on a remote server, the extra net damage might convince the runner that your twice advanced card actually is a Project Junebug trying to flatline you
• but again it only seems to be worthwhile with the runner holding a certain amount of cards in his hand (in this case 4)
• realizing how precisely Jinteki is trying to kill the runner, Net Shield appears to be a tad better
• so when playing Data Mine I think one needs to be patient and not rez it on the first occasion, heck the runner might even waste a Forged Activation Orders
• you can play a Data Mine in a lone server to bait a Bank Job, once the runner runs, the Data Mine explodes and the server is gone

A not particularly impactful piece of trap Ice for any corps apart from Chronos Protocol: Selective Mind-mapping, which will get good value by trashing a card of choice from the runner's hand. While it is free to rez it does take up a card slot and a to play + installation costs. Analysing the economic side of Data Mine we see the corp invests a card and installation costs in order to either tax a runner with an AI breaker or to take out one random card from the runners hand. Unless the corp was lucky to hit a particularly valuable card, the runner has only lost a to replace the card. It is unlikely that Data Mine will lead to a flatline outside of Jinteki: Personal Evolution and that is only if the runner is taking dangerous risks.

This card sits in a faction that already has a wide selection of high quality cheap Ice such as Pup, Yagura, Cortex Lock, Himitsu-Bako, Lockdown and possibly Harvester or Chum. Often in you will not have a lot of spare slots (especially not Ice slots) in your deck so this Ice will not see much play outside of Chronos Protocol.