Speech recognition is the most accurate I've ever seen it. From my experience, these smart devices have no trouble understanding people. If it can get my name right (and it does,) I'd say it's pretty damn good.

Recently I had one of my friends go through their Alexa account just to see what data Amazon is storing. There were so many clips that were marked "not for Alexa" but that were stored on their Amazon account that I lost count of how many. And the voices in the recordings were crystal clear--all the way from across their house, to the point where even I could understand what was being said in the recordings, with my hearing problem.

Just like some of us take the "it's not possible approach" because it seems impossible, others of us say it is indeed possible that data collection is happening on orders of magnitude higher scales than we know about. Images are being transmitted everywhere and cameras are talking to one another (and transferring image files, which are very large.) How do I know this? Well, if you go to a foreign country, enough of your identity is pulled up about you just by facial recognition. Nowadays you don't even need to pull out your passport and foreign agencies know where you live just by scanning your face (this is from experience.)

Data transfers are getting faster and bandwidth is increasing to the point where what used to slow down residential Internet just ten years ago now doesn't even cause it to hiccup. So yeah, it's entirely possible. We've been kept unaware because we believe in the mediocrity of technology, but this is exactly what the data collectors want from us.

If you have an Alexa, check out your Amazon account when you get some time and you'll be shocked at how many small recordings are stored of you--all without your knowledge. Once my friend discovered this, they finally listened to me and got rid of their smart technology. Especially after one of the recordings was of them and their significant other having sex...

I think for most people it's not a question of corporate control, but government control. Tech and software companies don't run the risk of actively undermining or circumventing your rights as a person, they just want more money. If mining your data makes their bottom line longer and there's nothing to prevent them from doing so, they'll do it. And since you're technically not forced to use their apps or technology, and since you agreed to all of what they're doing when you signed up to their service, it's your problem in their point of view. Where things get far more problematic is if state governments get free passes to all of your data, and if they somehow acquire the power to forbid you from doing certain things based on that data. That's what's happened in China, and now that these systems are in place over there, there isn't much that will put a stop to it. If you live in China you can't choose to just opt out of the social credit system. You're a citizen, so you have to use it. You can opt out, or flattly refuse to sign up to, things like Facebook or Amazon.

Hate to break it to you but even that won't help. These devices work by constantly sampling the surrounding audio in small buffers that they rotate out. Usually, the devices determine that they're just hearing ambient noise so they discard the buffers. But every now and then they'll choose to send voice recordings to the cloud for analysis if they detect that it "might be" for them but aren't entirely sure. Your device doesn't simply start listening when you hear the "ding" sound, it's always awake and listening. That's why you can shout at it to "wake it up," but that phrase "wake it up" is misleading and is a clever marketing scheme to trick you into thinking that as long as it didn't ding, it's not listening.

As an example, one of the clips we found on my friend's Alexa was five seconds or so and was of me and him talking, about an hour ago. Neither of us heard the "ding" that Alexa makes to let you know it's waiting for a response.

Just to say again I downloaded these podcasts/radio shows a long time ago because I was a fan and like to keep stuff on an external HDD. I called them podcasts, but a lot of them are just recordings of the entire radio show that have been file-shared on the web. But anyway, I listened to another one earlier and here's the latest coincidence. The two guys were talking about the wombles, which is a british kids TV show from the 70s I think, and they also mentioned Wind in the Willows, another kids TV show from the same era. In my recs now I have The wombling song by the wombles, and a clip from Wind in the Willows. Kids tv shows from the 70s isn't something  I have searched for, and these are the only two examples of such in my recs. Obviously now I'm actually looking for this stuff, confirmation bias could come into play, but all the same, these coincidences are pretty creepy, if that's what they are.

Its not just amazon that dnes this, or google? Have hey Siri enabled? Anyone? There, that's one more that does this. Voicecontrol is another. I could give a whole lot of examples, but will stop there. However; experience has taught me this; the people at the top, weather intelligence agency or whatever, those who run the world; do not have our best interests at heart, their actions are enough proof of this.

Sorry if this poast makes me look stupid, but seriously, amazon or google are collecting your data, who cares?
There are at least 1 million people using amazon and google products. Imagine how many staff you'd need to look through all that data.
No matter how many staff amazon or google has, it wouldn't be enough ot look through all your google searches, ETc.
So yeah.

That's my point, it's just computers analysing your data, not humans.

The problem is that, well, this is the internet.  It's not your private home.  You're not locked behind closed doors anymore.  This is why I always tell people that when you hit send or submit or OK or anything that counts as acknowledgement of consent on any device or online platform, you can no longer take it back.  It will at the very least leave a footprint, at the very most, become a part of your life you may regret.
"Not behind closed doors, you say?  What is this?  My door is closed and even locked, for that matter!"  Yes yes yes, but when you go online you have established a connection to the outside.  Your walls and doors and windows and ceiling aren't holding it all back; you're dealing with other people from all around the world who all have differing opinions and agendas and aims and goals and so on!  Companies want to market as companies have always done.  So do those who are self-employed, for that matter!  That's how business works!  It's like gathering at a city square, only the square is divided into sections and subsections and even smaller branches, from small groups to larger communities, all united in a global colabaration that makes up the internet of things.
And yes, your information is a part of that global colaboration, no matter how much you don't want it to be, unless you just, disconnect and pull the plugs and go away!  There are tradeoffs for any aspect of life.  You can live out in the middle of nowhere, no phone, no PC, no smart devices, no communication and all the privacy you could ever want, or you can connect, and even if its just the one device it will eventually share at least one piece of information you probably don't want it to, be it your location or your Apple music play history, or more personal matters.

Wow, yeah, a completely different topic indeed. 
I think the most private FB message I've sent would be an I love you.  If you've gone far beyond that?  Well, I seriously don't know what to tell ya.  I'd just like to point out though that if you're messaging your local drug dealer on FB you're probably either looking to get caught or seriously shouldn't be using the net.
If what @42 says is true though and FB is browsing through people's PM's, I dare say things are not as they used to be.  I'm sure AOL and MSN messaging never felt nearly as bad as all that.  Then again, what do I know.  I didn't study to become an online snoop.