The Shady, Shadowy Siri

While Siri provides some useful opportunities to make our lives more simple, does it demand too much in return? Sure it’s a ‘free’ service that we get on our devices, but really we pay good - a lot of money - to be able to have access to said devices and their ‘free’ features. We are really paying for a service that in turn is used against us. How can we optimize Siri on our phone to not be releasing so much of our data, tracking our habits and behaviors, locations, etc. Are the benefits really worth all this, or should we simply disable this feature altogether? It’s also important to note, how entire industries are shifting more towards features and opportunities that come with Siri-like software. Our cars are increasingly having less connection options, often forcing us to use these features without thinking twice about what they are actually costing us. CarPlay is a great feature, but doesn’t bluetooth for music work just fine enough? Is it just me lamenting on the loss of a CD player in my car? Am I the only one who thinks that GPS is far superior to apple/google maps, even without “real-time” traffic features that help us avoid potential slow downs? Isn’t the fact that “real-time” features are even offered on these products an example of using our data and information, to yes, make life more simple and easy for us, but also exploiting that information and giving it away freely to others? Are the speech to text, or having Siri able to make our phone calls for us, really saving us that much time, when in the long run, the selling of our personal information will likely result to us spending ‘more’ time distracted by and buying things (both physical and digital) that we would have otherwise been better off without? Things that companies use our data to help promote us to buy. With our information about buying habits, and even our financial situations, to compel us to buy these items at ‘just the right time’? Am I not the only one that thinks this is crazy - creepy!?