Poor people steal each other's shoes, go through each other's bags regardless whether you are sleeping close by! Even if "your" settlers are extremely loyal, there could be visitors. Don't they steal anything from the player character?

I'm glad they keep their mits off my stuff. They probably know what will happen if they steal from a guy who just slapped additional flame emitters on and already flaming katanna because it didn't have enough fire

That could lead to some dialog where a settler explains to a child "Just don't steal from that man ..."

"See him, son? He returns every three days with enough firepower to arm everyone in town. He is the Gun Bringer, lord of bullets, fire, and destruction..."

I roleplay that stuff that falls through the world was actually stolen...

But then in a rival settlement some raiders that already knew about the man from 200 years ago and already have failed to raid his settlement came upon an idea: "Why not just enter that settlement as a friendly visitor and go look for his goodies! Since we don't live there, he'll never find us .... gickle!!"

If they did steal from me they'd get enough guns, grenades, and mines to take out a small country from my Red Rocket Settlement. Also if they carried fusion cores they'd have a army of Power Armor to take too, but they'd have to go through one hell of a turret defense to get to all my stuff.

But then inside your Red Rocket Settlement there was this settler with a weak character, who'd sell out his mom for a good bottle of whisky. And he was persuaded to turn off your turret generators at the right moment, so with some trickery they got away with half your stuff!

I'd track the alcoholic down and teach him a good lesson

No no, he was not scared at you at all, because he had good friends among the other settlers, after all to this drunkard it was more like a practically joke, that some of the hero's precious possessions got stolen! So in the end you began to look for hiding places for your goodies instead ...

Settlers DO take your guns if left in containers outside workbench inventory mode. At lesst at sanctuary, ddnt test other locations.

It doesnt seem frequent and maybe only when random pathing has them go by your container, but at sanctuary next to workbench i built a container to store what i call my 'off weapons' - ones i dont always carry with me 24/7 but take often enough i dont want to scroll through entire workbench weapons inventory.

Came back one day to find my suppressed max modded .38 auto pistol missing. Turns out a settler had taken it (had to check everyone's inventory)

Far as i can tell, if the settler has the right kind of ammo on them, they view any gun that is better as fair game if not in workbench. Since settlers also scrounge ammo/weapons off dead raiders if you dont get to them first, they can start with pipe pistols, find some fusion cells, then decide yoir modded laser rifle would be an awesome upgrade

They havent taken any non-weapon gear but i dont store that outside workbench so not sure on that. My purified water stash is always safe, but my gun locker seems free game for settlers. I am going to test the lazy mans way of arming my settlers by giving all settlers 1 ammo of each type, then over time as i feel lkke it. Just dump my hand me down weapo s into the gun locker and see if over time my settlers re-arm the,selves with better weapons.

If it works, all i'd need to do is constantly supply the gun locker with better guns instead of hunt down and arm each settler separately

Didn't experience any of that before using the workbench as storage.

So all settlers automatically know any inventory inside the whole settlement; they do not have to stumble upon it?

It's not like the game is telling you, that the "workbench" is the player's private storage and that building a private house is useless.

The very first line of my statement said this is only for containers outside workbench inventory.

Eg.
"Settlers DO take your guns if left in containers outside workbench inventory mode. At lesst at sanctuary, ddnt test other locations."

oddly, you took the time to quote my statement and manually edit out the upper parts, but didnt read the first line even as you erased it.

It's nice that all settlers are perfect inhabitants and leave all stuff in workbench untouched. Not even the suppliers between settlements score bits of their transports. How innocent.

Settlers often nick my power armour, raiders too! I've moved mine to a roof top you have to jump on to avoid people nicking it