Employee caught company spying on her after laptop slowed down. So she hit back with the ultimate 'uno reverse'

A Reddit post by u/Rakhered reveals how one worker outsmarted her company’s surveillance program and sped up her computer in the process. In the post that gained 7.6k upvotes in two days, the office worker explained that she recently discovered that the lagging performance of her computer wasn’t due to a technical glitch but due to company-installed spyware recording her every move. She shared, "I'm not super concerned with being surveilled personally (my job is more project-driven), but after seeing this damn spy program consistently taking up a third of my RAM, I decided enough was enough."

What u/Rakhered experienced is not unusual. Research shows that over 86% of companies now use monitoring software to track employees in real time, recording keystrokes, logging app usage, or even taking random screenshots of their screens. An American Psychological Association report has also found that this type of surveillance can harm well-being, with employees reporting higher stress levels, reduced morale, and a sense of lost autonomy. Faced with the same kind of invasive software on her own computer, the user decided to take matters into her own hands.

She wrote that she had replaced the program her employer used to track computer activity with a dummy .exe file that could not open. Instead of disabling the service completely, which she didn’t have permission to do, she pulled off a workaround. "[I] had just enough admin privileges to change the name of the .exe for the program, and copy over another exe with an identical name that doesn’t actually open," and the strategy worked. "My PC is so much faster now that my screen isn’t being recorded 24/7," she said. Still, she acknowledged the potential risk, "Man I hope IT doesn’t come knocking anytime soon lol."

The story resonated with many users, who chimed in with both technical insights and words of support. u/Background_Spend_500 quipped, "I’m very surprised they don’t have that access blocked with admin privileges. Kinda shows you how much they actually care." u/50centourist wrote, "Good for you. I also never accept a company phone because they put those trackers in them. It's terrible how companies treat workers like that and get away with it." u/QuantumDorito suggested, "Random idea but what about duplicating the exe, open in note pad, type a bunch of nonsense randomly throughout the app and then save it as an exe again. Icon saved, file corrupted."

Many also cautioned that it would lead to her getting fired if the IT found out. u/xXSillyHoboXx commented, "I would assume at some point IT is gonna be notified by whoever actively checks whatever that software reports to, and they’ll be asked to fix it. Who knows how long before that happens. I’ve worked in IT for about 15 years now...most IT are just gonna fix the problem and move on." u/_clickfix_ chimed in, "Suspicious and unexpected file in the folder is a major red flag… at that point they might be wondering if there’s a virus or malware on the machine that created the file." u/Rakhered grew frustrated by the repeated cautions from readers, adding, "Please stop commenting about how I’m going to get fired. It’s quite annoying to see another 'you’re gonna get fired' comment every 3 hours."

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