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I usually route all my traffic through a VPN - when I'm in Australia..... I'd probably wipe the laptop and install a different OS. kpassx and Enpass are also useful for storing notes etc.

THink I'll have o

Linux Mint or Fedora Cinnamon are both pretty easy to use. Protonmail for email also.

If it's any consolation - with things like this someone wouldn't have to physically access your laptop or your notes if they wanted data, they'd already have it - via data/metadata collection or remote access methods. I imagine Andrew Wilkie would know quite a lot about it. What you've described would take about 3 minutes with the right tools.