Her company spied on her with RAM-hogging software, so she pulled a brilliant 'uno reverse'

When an office worker's computer starts lagging, the first suspect is usually a bad internet connection or too many open tabs. For one Reddit user, the culprit was far more sinister: her employer was watching her.

User u/Rakhered shared a viral story of digital rebellion after discovering that her company had installed invasive spyware on her machine. The program wasn't just tracking her; it was devouring her computer’s resources.

"I'm not super concerned with being surveilled personally (my job is more project-driven)," she wrote in the post. "But after seeing this damn spy program consistently taking up a third of my RAM, I decided enough was enough."

Stressed out woman at workCanva

The Rise of "Bossware"

This type of monitoring is becoming the new normal. Research indicates that over 86% of companies now utilize some form of software to track employee activity. A report by the American Psychological Association found that this constant surveillance is directly linked to higher stress levels, distrust, and reduced morale among workers.

In this specific case, the software was recording the employee's screen 24/7, turning her workstation into a sluggish nightmare.

Gif of office worker trying to get computer to work faster via Giphy

The "Uno Reverse"

Fed up with the performance issues, u/Rakhered devised a clever, albeit risky, workaround. She couldn't simply uninstall the program because she lacked full administrative rights, but she found a loophole in the file permissions.

"[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," she explained.

Essentially, she swapped the real spy camera for a dummy prop. The system thought the program was running, but the file was actually a dud.

The Result

The fix was immediate.

"My PC is so much faster now that my screen isn’t being recorded 24/7," she celebrated. However, she acknowledged that she was playing a dangerous game with the IT department: "Man I hope IT doesn’t come knocking anytime soon lol."

Female employee celebrates at workCanva

The Internet Reacts

The post ignited a massive conversation on Reddit. Many users applauded her ingenuity, while others were shocked that the company's security was lax enough to allow the swap.

"I’m very surprised they don’t have that access blocked with admin privileges," one user quipped. "Kinda shows you how much they actually care."

Others shared their own horror stories of corporate overreach. "I also never accept a company phone because they put those trackers in them," wrote user u/50centourist. "It's terrible how companies treat workers like that."

However, IT professionals in the comments warned that her victory might be short-lived.

"I would assume at some point IT is gonna be notified," one user commented, predicting that the system would eventually flag the software as "non-reporting," prompting a manual check.

As the warnings about potential termination piled up, u/Rakhered eventually edited her post to shut down the naysayers.

"Please stop commenting about how I’m going to get fired," she wrote. "It’s quite annoying to see another 'you’re gonna get fired' comment every 3 hours."

For her, the risk of a pink slip was clearly worth the reward of a computer that actually worked.

employee surveillance, bossware, Reddit work stories, corporate spying, computer lagging, u/Rakhered, IT workaround, remote work monitoring, RAM usage YouTube

This article originally appeared earlier this year.