Again this depends on the technology and, even more important, on the decision to even start using that technology. When confronted with some 'new technology you need to tiptoe around [...] and/or find ways to disable [...]' the decision should be to not use that technology. Home speakers, cloud-connected everything, data parasite owned doorbells, payment systems run by the same - don't use them. If you really want a 'home speaker' make one yourself, it won't be much worse than whatever you get when you allow one of those data parasite-produced spies into your home. Don't put a camera an microphone at your door which sends all images and sounds directly to the cloud,if you want a camera at your door make sure it only sends images to a network and storage you control.

Data technology has gone mainstream and with that it is used by adversarial actors, this was much less the case in the time of yore. There was no 'big data' because the storage and processing capacity to enable it did not exist while nowadays it is available to anyone who has the means - and those means are steadily going down. In biological terms data technology used to be a niche which was found by a group of critters which happily lived in their secluded valley until it suddenly spread over the whole world. With that came new opportunities - jobs galore for anyone who knew his way around - but also new threats, predators and parasites. That is where we are now so the name of the game is survival of the fittest. In other words, up your ante, ditch parasite technology and learn to thrive again. You'll have to swat some buzzing parasite every now and then, both the winged as well the branded variety. Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.