Root and Recover Mode

I needed to boot into Recover Mode to fix something recently. This made me ponder the philosophy of not using root through su - or logging into root; the password is not known.

Well, if you are root in recover mode, you can do anything, right?

So, if your laptop is stolen, won't anyone have access to everything. I am probably wrong about this, hope so.

Correct. Anyone who has physical access to your computer can do anything with it. This is true of any operating system.

If you're worried about your laptop getting stolen, your private data should be encrypted.