PS I wasn’t clear on whether “unplugged” means “unplugged from power” or “unplugged from the network”. There are some differences in the security and privacy considerations but the bottom line remains the same … you are inviting a potentially hostile device into your home. Caveat emptor.
Fair enough @person, everyone has different levels of privacy they feel comfortable with. There are a number of ‘listening’ devices in the home to consider in this regard, mobile phones, TVs, fridges and laptops are some common examples.
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I need my phone on hand while I am working, but I position it so that there is no chance it could see what is on my screens. It is impossible to be certain that the cameras are not ‘live’ without physically removing the battery - and that is both impossible with most modern phones and defeats the purpose for which I need it to hand.
I am also very conscious of not ‘verbalising’ passwords as I enter them (for those few I actually need to remember). Even if my phone is not in the room, my computer has speakers - and any speaker is a potential (if not very good) microphone.
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For sure. My opinion, my life. I just hope other people are making informed decisions, giving informed consent.
I think there’s a difference between a fridge and a “Google Home”. Basically everyone needs a fridge. Noone needs a “Google Home”. (I suppose it is also still possible to buy a simple fridge that does not contain a computer or connect to the network or …)
Sounds like you need a better phone.
Now that you mention it though I can see that I too have my phone oriented the same. I think that is unintentional or at least subconscious - and more motivated by convenience of grabbing it in a hurry to answer it.
Good on you. It is all I can do to stop users emailing passwords around. 
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Things get difficult when I have to give passwords to my wife (same house) or my mother (different location in same city).
With my wife I generally write it down on a scrap of paper that is later burned - yes, you can reconstruct information from ashes but we are not that important.
With my mother I use at least two forms of communication (part verbally by phone, text using secure software), and sometimes hints help.
Don’t make it easy for anyone who is trying to access your data. I realise that a government would have no trouble, but basic protections will prevent other Bad People from gaining easy access to my online life.
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Perhaps I should have explained that the light I have defined as Garage, is not actually in the garage, its in the room next to it, which would otherwise be in complete darkness when I enter the house. My auto light on the opener is pretty crappy and its in a location which means that dark room does not get lit to any useful degree.
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I changed the light to a LED with cool white (warm light is too yellow a tone) rating. This immensely improved the lighting from the mechanisms light. Perhaps worth checking out.
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Perhaps I should explain this more clearly.
Everyone knows what Google’s business model is: Provide a free or cheap service, raid the customer’s privacy for all it is worth by hoovering up data, sell the results to make the real money.
Google search, google maps, google mail, google translate, google chrome, google photos, YouTube.
In other words, “if you are not paying for the product, you are the product”.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that - providing that informed consent is given - and I have some concerns that people are not sufficiently informed or not giving consent at all. (As we saw with the Cambridge Analytica episode, it really doesn’t matter what you think is happening to your private data that is no longer under your control, something else might be happening.)
Now add to that … it is alleged that with current technology it is not possible to do speech processing locally on such an under-powered device as a Google Home or indeed on the latest generation of smart TVs that feature voice control. So the devices listen in and send the audio stream to a big server somewhere in the world and that server formulates a response. If that doesn’t sound like a terrible accident waiting to happen, I don’t know what does.
If nothing else, data sovereignty issues are raised. You simply aren’t protected by Australian privacy law (such as it is) because data flows very easily and very quickly all over the world.
Fair enough. Some people have solved that problem by having dual-control lights i.e. a switch at each end of the room. Not easy to retrofit though.
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Of course, Samsung famously got into trouble a few years ago because its TVs didn’t stop listening.
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