I am surprised by the number of people who seem to believe that since the work laptop belongs to the company, it is completely acceptable for any IT support staff to access it without authorization.

@MaskedMan I think the OP thinks this is some huge demotion. I have known seniors that were the product owner (Resident expert) of some system or another. I am not sure why the OP thinks this but I think they have a chip on their shoulder that makes them think its ok to do less work and have less responsibilities because they didnt get the title they applied for.

@MaskedMan I think authorization means less than what most people think it means

Authorization is not a directive to be disrespectful, or just go in and make changes to the laptop with out letting the user know ahead of time.... even if they have permission to do just that.

@MaskedMan agreed.

wow, this place is dead

@MaskedMan In theory it does. But you are expected to use discretion. You have the ability and power to do so, but you are trusted not to abuse that.

But that should never mean that you are putting stuff out in a drive unprotected that has confidential information that the tech shouldnt have access to.

There are alot of techs that do not understand enough about normal social boundries that it creates problems.

It's me once again. I had an interview at an amazing company last week and I am very excited about that particular opportunity. I am supposed to get a job offer or rejection tomorrow. Is there any way to increase my chance to get it? Linkedin Connect request, thank you email showing how excited I am about the position. I am slightly worry I might come across as desperate though

@IDrinkandIKnowThings Exactly. Everyone in workplace is expected to be ethical and it happens everywhere. My company use a job application form which they created. Recently for some changes, they just gave me dump of whole database containing details of every applicant

@VarunAgrawal That is actually a criminal offense(the person who gave you the dump not you)

In the US anyway

It was company laptop though. Smaller a company is, the least they care about laws. I have similar experience everywhere I have been.

And it's so surprising, the so called IT companies care so little about security. Forget full disk encryption, I have seen most of the developers (even senior) don't use even login password or lock their computer when they go for lunch

One of my colleague called me weird because I care about data security and encrypt everything

^^^ I think that would be a very desirable feature. That, or rate limit suggested in the answer there