Memopal - A Warning!

On April 4th I installed Memopal, an online cloud storage system. I included it in my comparison of cloud storage systems on April 6th.  I've had nothing but problems every since but it took me until earlier this week to figure out what was happening.

First thing I noticed was that my MacBook Air was running very slowly. There was an annoying lag between me typing and the actual text appearing on screen. Everything was sluggish.

Then a browser window began to open unexpectedly and without my doing anything. The window was at the Memopal website where a prominent notice announced I was out of space and needed to purchase more. That was puzzling since I'd set the Memopal options to download one small directory from my computer hard drive.

At first I ignored what was happening. But the Memopal browser window began opening several times daily. So I logged into the Memopal website and discovered that much of my hard drive had been uploaded to it. I was stunned. Everything was there, not just the folder I'd selected originally. Oddly enough the website also stated that of my specific amount of free storage, I'd used double that. Huh? How could I use twice what I was allowed?

I began deleting the files on the website. That wasn't as easy as it sounds. Then I found Memopal on my computer (did I mention I had to download a program to use Memopal? Big mistake on my part!) and shoved it into the Trash can. But it would not go and a message came up telling me Memopal could not be deleted because it was open. Hmm... I hadn't opened it, I just found the application on my hard drive and selected it for deletion.

So I opened the application and immediately saw that it was busy downloading my entire computer's hardrive! Another look showed me that it had been doing that for over a week, presumably running unnoticed in the background. No wonder my computer was so sluggish.


I was able to "pause" the download but I could not stop it permanently. Every time my computer was turned back on the download resumed. I could not cancel it. I could not delete Memopal no matter what I did as my Mac continued to inform me the program was open. A visit to the Memopal website revealed that all the files I'd deleted several hours earlier were back. I deleted those files a half dozen times over the next several hours and they still kept reappearing.

In the Memopal program on my computer I had 3 options - download my entire computer (recommended by Memopal!) or download one folder or one other choice. I could also limit the file size in MB. I reset the options to "one folder" chose the specific folder (a test folder with nothing of importance) and set the size to no file bigger than 1 MB.

I started the download process but instead of downloading the folder as instructed it began downloading all files on my hard drive.  I spent almost 4 hours trying to solve this problem before finally figuring out how to access the actual contents of the application that I'd installed on my computer. Even though I could not delete the application itself I was able to delete the contents, that is, the scripts that made the application run. That stopped the download and I went back to the website and once again deleted all the files from my computer that were there.

Then I cancelled my account - again, not a  simple task. It required an email to "support" and then a wait for a response. That took over 24 hours.

So - I recommend that you avoid Memopal! I am still worried about my files being downloaded to the website but that's done so all I can do is change all my passwords and hope that I did not have any sensitive information on my hard drive. A lesson learned.