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Here’s the latest from Facebook:

For years, Facebook has been badgering its users to set up two-factor authentication, which is indeed considered best practice for online security. This requires you to give Facebook your phone number so that they can text you a passcode to log in to your account.

But last year we learned that Facebook had made all these phone numbers available to advertisers so they could target ads. Now it turns out that even if you never added it to your profile, other people can still look you up via your phone number.

Is this a big deal? In and of itself, maybe not. But there are two big harms here anyway. First, Facebook has once again revealed personal information without asking permission. The default should be to keep security information completely private unless you explicitly give permission to share it. But in this case it’s not. And not only is the default set to make it shareable, there’s not even a way to change it once you discover what’s going on.

Second, this kind of behavior will rightfully make people suspicious of security enhancements. It’s in everyone’s best interest to improve online security, and we should always feel confident that online companies are at least doing their best to keep our security information safe and private. Once again, though, Facebook has blown up this implicit contract in order to improve its bottom line by a few dollars. Nice work, guys.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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