Well, you turned off all the obvious always-on listening devices. In reality any phone can be listening all the time without you knowledge. As to whether they a

Well, you turned off all the obvious always-on listening devices. In reality any phone can be listening all the time without you knowledge. As to whether they are actually listening is another question, accusations on the subject fly [1] and [2] get rebutted [3] all the time [4] but it is hard to prove or disprove either thesis. On the subject of the usability of these 'assistants' I mostly do agree except for the possibility to use voice commands which can sometimes be useful. Fortunately that option does not need an always-on internet connection to some faraway mothership and is easy to implement in free software, e.g. [5]. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/10/30/facebook-listening-conspiracy-theory-refuses-die/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/10/30/facebook-li... [2] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41802282 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41802282 [3] https://lifehacker.com/facebook-isn-t-recording-your-conversations-but-it-may-1820193946 https://lifehacker.com/facebook-isn-t-recording-your-convers... [4] https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=facebook+phone+listening https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=facebook+phone+li... [5] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-mark-ii-the-open-voice-assistant https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-m...