14 DAY TRIAL // The applications and games operated by LOLapps are back on Facebook after they were suspended over the weekend for violating the social network's terms of sevice.
LOLapps is one of the largest developers on the Facebook platform, its apps such as Quiz and Gift Creator or games like Critter Island, Garden Life, Band of Heroes, etc., being used by over 150 million users.
On Saturday, all of LOLapps' products disappeared from Facebook without any prior warning, leaving users wondering why they can't access their favorite games.
A statement from Facebook later revealed that the applications violated its terms and were disabled, but the developer refused to comment on the specifics.
In a blog post today, Arjun Sethi, LOLapps' CEO, revealed that the suspension was related to a Wall Street Journal report about applications sharing user IDs (UIDs) with advertisers.
Facebook UIDs are unique numbers, that can easily be used to access someone's profile and any information they chose to make public.
Advertisers can use this little piece of information to link a name or a face with a click on one of their adds and can also correlate this with other sources of data to get a phone number or address.
Facebook explicitly prohibits applications from sharing user personally identifiable information with advertisers or other third parties.
In this case, the UIDs were sent as part of referrer URLs included in HTTP headers. According to Mr. Sethi, this was unintentionally.
The company at the receiving end, San Francisco-based Rapleaf, specializes in building dossiers on people by aggregating information from various places, which are then used by its customers for targeted advertising.
According to the WSJ, Rapleaf shared user IDs received from Facebook developers with other advertising firms, also unintentionally.
"When we were informed of the issue the relationship that put us into this category was immediately dissolved," Arjun Sethi announced.
"Since Lolapps was founded in 2008, we have always been committed to Facebook’s platform policies and will continue to be as we grow," he added.