They Have Been Profiled

I am working for an IT service provider. We are currently replacing all of the PCs of a company of several dozen employees. The old PCs had 512-GB hard-drives; the new ones have 128-GB SSDs. Not much, but aside from the OS and some software, nothing is supposed to be stored on these PCs. All files, databases, and stuff are stored on servers and accessed via shares or terminal connections. In order for us to not have to configure each user profile on the new PCs, and for them to be able to work on other PCs if necessary, their user profiles and everything in them are being synchronized with the servers and downloaded automatically on first login of that user at a PC.

I’m currently installing the new PC for a certain employee. The moment I we try to login with his account, I get an error message, basically stating that the PC could not download the profile stored on the server onto the PC, for whatever reason. I go through a number of troubleshoots, none of which are effective.

I then decide to simply create a new account for him, which works like a charm. However, when I have some waiting time later, I decide to check out his old account, if only to make sure the problem would not occur on other accounts, too.

After checking a few things, I decide to copy the profile to have a backup. My eyes widen as I see that the profile is over 250GB in size, when it should only be a few MB. Way too large for the SSD, of course, which is the reason why it was unable to download. Using a tool, I am able to display all the files in the profile directory, as well as their sizes. What do I discover? The employee has collected hundreds of pictures and videos and stored them locally on his PC, obviously not realizing that they would be synchronized with the server. Almost 250GB of p*rn, some of it the more disturbing variety.

I am told that the employee will not be returning to his office.