Those of us who are active on social media may not think about it, but we are giving away all sorts of data about ourselves every time we use our accounts.
One of the most important things to think about when you're quickly clicking through all the permissions screens that precede your membership to a social network is what information you want to keep private. (It's also a good idea to revisit your social media accounts from time to time to update your privacy settings.)
What's interesting is how many people don't think about these things at all. Would it freak you out if someone walked up to you on the street and starting spouting back your personal information to you?
That's what comedian and prankster Jack Vale did in a new video, using only the power of publicly available, personally shared information through social media. By searching the closest Twitter, Instagram, and other social media posts near his location, Vale found out all kinds of revealing things about the people walking around and shopping between the Santa Ana and San Diego Freeways one day.
After matching someone on the street to the location-based image that was uploaded in real-time on Twitter or Instagram, he would approach them and start a conversation like he knew them. It's all on video:
His "Social Media Experiment" shows that, as Vale puts it to stunned one prank victim in the "REVEALS" video, "the information people share on social media isn't as private as you think."