My personal vim config on a company laptop? No problem whatsoever, neither for me, nor the company.

A bittorrent client without preauthorization with IT and security? It's basically asking to get fired.

My vacation photos on a company laptop? Tricky - not a huge deal but not recommended. Better upload them to your cloud backup quickly.

Yup,. you get it, exactly! It's not a surveillance state, but don't be stupid, and certainly don't LEAN into it.

You're own tools are your own personal files?

Interesting. How do your vacation pictures help you do your job?

Not the OP, but personal files are not just vacation pictures. I work in R&D and I have my org-mode/roam on various scientific and technical topics going back 15 years or so. I use these for work to benefit my current company, and maintaining two parallel versions of these is rather inconvenient.

Isn’t that exactly what a cloud drive is for? There’s a difference between using your personal notes for business purposes on the one hand, and keeping company property and data on a machine totally outside IT control. That’s just a massive lawsuit waiting to happen, and it’s bad for the employee too - why would you want the liability?

I would't store company data or code outside of approval services, but one might say that my notes, including notes on the people I meet and projects I work on, can constitute proprietary information - so yeah, it is a bit of a grey area still.

I am speaking of company property in only the narrowest sense, ie. physical objects and IP (and I guess property but I've been WFH for a decade, so,..

I don't want or accept IT control of my personal machine.

> How do your vacation pictures help you do your job?

This question is why I don't want the company laptop.

Are you required to maintain PCI compliance? Do you touch customer personal info?