Comment 27 for bug 623708

Same issue here on Xubuntu 12.04, out of the blue after a normal login. (Empty desktop, duplicate files in ~/home, default desktop settings restored, all personal launchers and keyboard shortcuts disappeared, ...)
#20 solved the problem (I just deleted everything that had no ECRYPTFS in its name, try "find /home/.ecryptfs/USERNAME/.Private/ | grep -v ECRYPTFS" for a list of such files)
During the last weeks I experienced daily to hourly crashes/freezes of xfce4-panel. Maybe this was already caused by non-available files due to the damaged encryption - I'll see whether it continues or not.

cat /etc/*release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS"

dpkg -l | grep ecrypt
ii ecryptfs-utils 96-0ubuntu3

uname -a
Linux tl 3.2.0-29-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 27 17:04:05 UTC 2012 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux