As of May 25th, it is required by EU law that users can download their personal data, and transfer it to another service if available/desired, in a commonly use and machine readable format.
How can we (will we be able) to download things like self-created courses and learning progress?
While I understand what you mean, strictly speaking, personal data is not quite your learning progress, so I don’t think it will affect Memrise in this regard:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/what-personal-data_en
I’m not sure I agree. The official definition of what constitutes “personal data” is very broad. From the official definition on that site:
Personal data is any information that relates to an identified or identifiable living individual.
I think that a reasonable argument could be made that since Memrise knows your IP address, which is listed as “personal data”, and possibly also your real name and address, which they might, depending on how you log in or subscribe to their services, then everything that they store about you is “personal information.” This could be learning data, location data, information about the time of day you study, your IP addresses used to access the site, payment card data, etc. etc.
But based on their past behavior on this forum, I doubt very much that Memrise will comply with the rules voluntarily, and they will probably ignore all posts about the topic. And it would not surprise me at all if we hear about them being fined by some data protection commissioner somewhere eventually.
To be fair, the Memrise Privacy Policy has been updated to reflect the changes that come into effect on 25 May, including the definitions of what constitutes Personal Data held by Memrise and our rights to access under the revised EU law. You can find it here: Privacy Page and they have placed a link to it in the FAQ section here: https://memrise.helpshift.com/a/memrise-learn-a-new-language/?p=web&s=data-privacy
Thanks for linking to that @alanh.
After reading their updated privacy policy, it confirms what I thought. They concede that essentially all of the information they have about us is “personal data”, yet they very characteristically give themselves broad license to “share” our data far and wide with affiliates, data processors, service providers, etc. for commercial and other purposes. The so called “privacy shield” program that they mention with their US company service providers is a joke, which may even be ruled illegal at some point this year, following complaints from EU privacy campaigners. Once your data is in the hands of a US company, I would say that you have no effective privacy protection at all.
And Memrise’s instructions to “contact us” to request removal, deletion, revoke consent, etc. are laughable to those of us who are familiar with how they treat their customers. We know from reading all of the posts on the forums that they routinely, and as a matter of general practice, ignore their customers’ requests for refunds and cancellations, and many other complaints, sometimes for weeks, months, or even years.
Memrise management have never been conscientious about fulfilling their obligations to their customers, and I don’t believe that they will suddenly change now, notwithstanding the very lofty verbiage and illusory promises they make to us in their “privacy policy” or elsewhere.
I took a closer look into this and it seems you are right. At the time of writing that I thought of only Username X learnt 10 words, etc. and didn’t consider that my IP, email, real name and so on is linked to my username…
@Alanh - you always point to the right direction. I just filled out the form and they say they will reply in 30 days.
@xvg11: Though we feel often that memrise is not as responsive as we’d like, they do actually respond, based on their priorities. It might not be as responsive as we’d like, but much more responsive than we often think. 
First, who is “we?” You don’t speak for me.
Second, that’s patently false.
They ignore users all of the time. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen posts telling the same story: “Memrise charged me for a renewal after I cancelled Pro! I emailed them 4 times, but received no response/automated unresponsive reply. I need my money back. Please help!”
That abuse and neglect of paying customers should never happen. No legitimate business treats its customers that way.
Next, look at this thread:
That thread was started in August of 2017, nine months ago, but nobody from Memrise has responded at all. Memrise has ignored it completely. On their main page, they make the unqualified claim that in the free version you can “learn and review” but obviously this is not true for iOS users. Just the other day, @xKimka started another thread asking about this, and still they ignore this legitimate question, and the very obvious conflict between their (arguably false) advertising and the reality of what they do.
So, don’t tell me that “they do actually respond,” because it is not true, and just sounds like you are either willfully ignoring reality or are a Memrise employee trying to do PR damage control in the forums, by posing as an ordinary user.
I am in the same boat as you are. I think all people here like Memrise to respond sooner and more often. And yes, sometimes there are posts for refunds (not seen many recently), but I have seen seldom users replying for the second time, which makes it seem that Memrise has taken care of it. Why, otherwise, wouldn’t at least a number of them come back for a second or third post saying ‘I still don’t have my money!’.
I don’t like it that when sometimes we ask for Memrise’s opinion, and they sometimes don’t repond. I think that at least we should hear what their opion is and a possible time for a solution if any. That is what I mean with ‘…not as responsive as we’d like’ BTW: unless it is as responsive a you like, this ‘we’ does include you.
But critical issues that affects many or all users, they reply quite promptly. Most recently here.
You’ve chosen to ignore the many dozens of complaints in the threads that I linked to, which prove undeniably that Memrise employees respond only to what they choose to respond to, and ignore everything else that they don’t want to talk about, for months, perhaps years, if they choose.
You also very conveniently ignore the fact that Memrise routinely lies brazenly to its users. In some case lying to members for weeks or months at a time.
In one instance they lied and said that their deliberate “experiments” were mysterious bugs, that “the team is looking into.” Only after the “experiments” were over did they admit the truth.
Another time, about a year and a half ago, they completely changed the way their system handles commas in answers, intentionally and unnecessarily breaking hundreds or thousands of user-created courses. When users complained loudly, first they ignored the complaints. Then they pretended that it was a mysterious “bug” that they were “looking into” and asking for “screenshots” of. Finally, after about two months passed and hundreds of additional complaints posted, the COO finally came to the forum, and admitted the ugly truth, that they had broken the user-created courses through their deliberate action, and had been lying to the users for months.
You also ignore the fact that just a few weeks ago, BeaTrisy came on here and lied again, saying that the user Bio field would remain “private,” when the truth is that they removed it completely from the users’ view and control. When the users asked for clarification of Beatrisy’s inane claim about the non-existent bio field, they were completely ignored. They seem to think that they can follow in the footsteps of the lying tailors in the story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes,” and make us sing the praises of the wonderful new “private” bio field that only fools can’t see. 
The examples that I’ve listed in these posts are just the tip of the iceberg of Memrise’s bad behavior toward its users, and there is no excuse for any of it.
So don’t try to tell me that on “critical issues that affects many or all users, they reply quite promptly,” because that claim is not just false, but blatantly, glaringly, and indisputably false.
This is such a great post and makes me wonder why I am still here lol
@TheFour-GatedDanzig Thanks for the compliment.
Do you know something? I just discovered the answer to John Baite’s question about why he doesn’t see more posts from dissatisfied users. I wondered about it too, because I know that I saw many such complaints, but suddenly can’t find them. The answer is shocking, and makes Memrise look even more sleazy and dishonest.
The answer is that they hide the posts!
Look at this conversation that I had with @Teenage_Polyglot.
Do you see at the bottom of the thread where it says that the topic was “unlisted” one day ago by MemriseSupport? That means that they hid it. You can only find an “unlisted” topic if you already know the direct link to it. It doesn’t appear in the forum search tool, nor in any list of forum posts, nor on my profile page, or on Teenage_Polyglot’s profile, even though we both posted in that thread.
Now look at @Teenage_Polyglot’s profile activity.
According to Memrise, this user has not created any posts. But we know they have.
So Memrise is actively hiding posts that are inconvenient. They have hit a new low, even for them! So that’s how they enable their defenders or perhaps their paid shills to say, “If things are so bad, where are all the negative posts?”
Can you believe that they have stooped so low as to delete and hide posts?
Edited to add: I didn’t spend much time looking, and I easily found two more refund complaints that were just hidden and unlisted by MemriseSupport yesterday.
In my opinion it’s extremely incriminating that MemriseSupport spent a good deal of time searching for and deleting/hiding evidence of dissatisfied customers who had asked for refunds. I bet if I spent more time searching, I could find dozens or hundreds of posts from mistreated customers that they’ve hidden.
They are obviously very scared of the truth about their mistreatment of customers being revealed. You can see that one of the posts that they hid was two years old.
In my opinion, it seems that they are systematically destroying evidence of their bad behavior towards their customers.
Sorry, no intend to ignore what you say. Sorry you feel that way, but I did read your message. And I do agree with you that would like them to respond much more often then they do. It’s a nice platform, still we have some wishes - it’s not perfect! Averagely my satisfaction is at the ‘plus’ side.
