[taylodl]

Like Steffan said, this is old news. If it's easy for people to get physical access to your machine - which is the case for a laptop - then you should encrypt the disk. I don't know the reasons why Apple doesn't do this by default (legacy? performance?) but they don't.

[cgarduno1]

I see. Well this is useful to know so thank you both! It still concerns me because I have some friends who have had their devices stolen with sensitive information and as I try and learn more about computing it's becoming clearer to me that everyone should encrypt EVERYTHING that is sensitive. Thanks to the both of you!