FWIW I get ads about Tinnitus on Instagram too. I don't use Siri or Alexa or Google Assistant - not because I'm particularly bothered about privacy - just my experience of Siri is it's not very useful
As others have said Alexa is always listening and sometimes other people are too.
The Lives of Others: Siri, Google and Cortana edition
www.theregister.com
As to the discussion about the Government listening in - a while back I read a paper Wired(?) article about monitoring and recording "everything".
It's not that law enforcement/security services proactively monitor everyone - though they monitor some people who they consider a danger - but a lot of information is routinely recorded by your ISP and phone provider etc.
When the arrest someone for organised crime or terror related offence, they go through their data and identify the people they've been interacting with, then they go back through their data and identify where they've been and who they've been interacting with... picking up one potential criminal can open up loads of lines of enquiry.
It presumably also flags up people they know who aren't criminals, like their plumber, pizza delivery company or the parents of their kids' friends who are also snooped through.
The main bone of contention with this is who has access and why.
I've read articles about councils using powers designed to investigate terrorists being used to try and catch people sending their kids to schools they're out of catchment for.
A family has won a landmark legal ruling that council officials acted illegally in spying on them to check they were living in the right school catchment area.
www.independent.co.uk
Then there's illegal access. If you've ever googled an ex or looked them up on Facebook out of random curiosity then I can see why people how are tempted to do the same thing in more confidential databases.
Most of the more recent articles on illegal access to official records are paywalled but here are a couple.
Old articles
Only a telegram from the Queen can get you off it
www.theregister.com
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