At Spy, we seek to be fully transparent about our data practices and their privacy implications, including as they relate to our individual members and donors.

When you choose to donate to Spy, you are opting to share some of your personal information with us and our fiscal sponsor, First Look Institute. Here is how we use and protect it:

1. We do not share, trade, sell, or otherwise release donors’ personal information to any third parties. This includes all donor information that is obtained both online and offline.
2. We use several systems to manage this information.
   • We use PayPal to manage our donor data. Our contract with PayPal includes provisions stipulating that it will not disclose user data and, if driven to disclose our data by law, will give us the opportunity to contest the disclosure in court. PayPal’s privacy statements are available here.
   • We use PayPal to provide our donation pages.
3. Donors who contribute more than $5,000 will appear in our 990 filings with the IRS, as required by law, on our website, and on our annual report, but otherwise, we do not disclose donor information without your explicit consent.
4. When you donate, even in cases in which your name is not published, your donation information is visible to select agents, affiliates, and staff. We keep all of these groups as small as possible and strive to control access within our organization and in the relationships we establish.
5. We limit access to all such user data for the purposes of newsletters, fundraising, and customer service only, and we require our employees with access to these systems to use modern authentication methods.
6. Aside from the disclosures above, donors are provided the same privacy when visiting our website as any other reader.