[autoexec]

> In reality, bugging my residence isn't going to result in very interesting data. What exactly do you think is going to happen?

You don't have to be doing anything wrong or "interesting" for that data to be collected and used against you later.

These days your normal everyday activities are being used to calculate things like your "consumer score" which determines things how much you pay for products, what your insurance company will charge you or will cover, what shows up to employers when they do background checks, and that's just on the private industry side of things.

The government is also collecting this data and you've either got an incredibly optimistic outlook or a very limited understanding of history if you think they couldn't ever use that data against you or against anyone who becomes an inconvenience to those in power.

[PeterStuer]

"Congratulations! You have just completed the 'Best Breakfast' achievement by shouting out 'Kellogg's Sugarpuffs is the most important meal of the day!' between 8 and 9 am at over 80db with at least 3 persons present in the room. You have earned the 95% discount coupon on 24 bottles of Nestle's Essentials Vitaplus Water (redeamable for the next 30 minutes), netting you a $456 saving brought to you by Amazon Alexa's Life Essentials Partner Program.

[anon9001]

Don't think the privacy people who have gone to great lengths to be off the grid will be first on the list of suspicious people?

And if there's no data available on you, don't you think they'll charge the highest rate anyway?

For the concerns you have, it'd be far better to maintain a socially-optimal profile with data collection, to show what a normal/happy/healthy/productive member of society you are.

I do support regulation on how companies collect and assemble data, but while they're doing it, your best bet is to have lots of uninteresting data collected on you.

Nothing is stopping you from having multiple identities for specific purposes.

[autoexec]

> For the concerns you have, it'd be far better to maintain a socially-optimal profile with data collection, to show what a normal/happy/healthy/productive member of society you are.

Surely you understand that many people don't want to live in a world where you have to maintain a false persona 24/7 to avoid being flagged for some unknown perceived infraction. Many people already curate a social media presence for that reason, but are you really okay with extending that to every last facet of your life?

Should you have to worry if some future employer or your insurance company might possibly think that you're buying too much alcohol, are too supportive of the wrong political party, are too gay, opinionated, not social enough, not happy enough, dating too often, eating out to much, etc.?

It doesn't make any sense to try to change your behavior to try to look like a model citizen at all times because you can't know what the criteria is you'll be judged by, how accurate the dossiers on you are, or how they're being used to impact your life.

This is a broken, dystopian, dangerous system and telling people to give up even trying to limit the amount of data they expose and simply accept it is not going to help change anything.

[anon9001]

> Surely you understand that many people don't want to live in a world where you have to maintain a false persona 24/7 to avoid being flagged for some unknown perceived infraction.

Yes, but they have no choice today.

> Many people already curate a social media presence for that reason, but are you really okay with extending that to every last facet of your life?

Nobody is forcing you to buy an Alexa. If you want an always-on digital assistant, then yes, you're probably ok with curation of the words you say while at home.

> Should you have to worry if some future employer or your insurance company might possibly think that you're buying too much alcohol, are too supportive of the wrong political party, are too gay, opinionated, not social enough, not happy enough, dating too often, eating out to much, etc.?

Yes, everyone has to worry about this in today's environment. It would be silly not to worry about this with what we know about large scale data collection.

> It doesn't make any sense to try to change your behavior to try to look like a model citizen at all times because you can't know what the criteria is you'll be judged by, how accurate the dossiers on you are, or how they're being used to impact your life.

No model is perfect, but I believe there is safety in numbers. You can't know what you'll be judged by, but the more people who share your views and actions, the less likely you are to attract problems.

> This is a broken, dystopian, dangerous system and telling people to give up even trying to limit the amount of data they expose and simply accept it is not going to help change anything.

I'm not telling people to give up trying to limit the amount of data they expose. I'm saying that everyone should develop their own threat model and see if an always-on listening device at home is appropriate for their needs.

I do not see any future where opting out of Alexa or Google Assistant would mitigate any of the fears you have. I do see a future where knowing how to audit your own security and how to use more than one identity will mitigate your fears.