content: Do you have a smartphone, a laptop, a desktop, a smartTV, a smart<whatever>?  Alexa, Echo, Dot are all just the most obvious devices for corporate surveillance.  There's no reason to believe that every other smart device isn't being used for the same thing. Unless you're taking apart these devices and examining them there's also no reason to believe there isn't a mic in them especially since Nest thermostats were found to have undocumented microphones.  At this point, every device capable of connecting to the internet is suspect. And just because you haven't configured the device to connect to your network doesn't mean it's not connecting to the internet to be able to phone home. All those open ISP access points? What do you think they're for? So their customers can access internet anywhere when everyone has a mobile hotspot in their pocket?  For a brief time I had one of these cable modems that had the dual access points. One AP was for my private network. The other was open access to any customer of my ISP. Per the ISP I had the ability to turn that open AP feature off. So I did. The second AP was still broadcasting though customers could no longer use it. And it was the loudest wifi signal in my home by several orders of magnitude.  So the question is why did it continue to broadcast after I turned it off on the ISP's website? The only answer that makes sense is for the IoT to be able to connect regardless of the consumer's wishes.  I'm in IT. I love technology. I do some fairly sophisticated things with my own home network. But, I will absolutely not have a smart device in my own home that I didn't build myself and when I no longer have the choice then I will either avoid having such products or if it's a product I consider a necessity like a TV (cord cut), I will open that fucker up and solder a ground on its antennas so it is incapable of connecting to any network wirelessly.