Italy's data protection authority fined Meta €805m for accessing Android users' photos and videos without obtaining specific consent or properly informing them, BBC reported. Around 20 million Android users in Italy were affected.
The penalty relates to Facebook's gallery suggestions feature, available since 2023, which draws on photos and videos stored in a user's phone gallery and surfaces them as potential post ideas while the user browses. Access to the photo gallery was obtained through a single authorisation covering the whole app. The notice shown beforehand was generic and left users unable to understand they were also enabling gallery-based post suggestions.
Italian authorities ranked the penalty among the biggest ever levied by an Italian body against a technology company. The fine amounts to roughly 0.4% of Meta's annual group turnover. Meta's annual turnover reached $201bn in 2025, with a net profit of $60.5bn.
The regulator gave Meta 60 days to turn the feature off by default and obtain user consent via a dedicated, separate request. When sizing the penalty, the authority pointed to the continuing nature of the breach for users who had not updated the app or had already given consent, and separately noted Meta's failure to cooperate with investigators.
A Meta spokesperson told the BBC the company planned to appeal the fine. Meta said it would challenge the ruling, disputing the authority's reading of the facts, its legal reasoning, and what it called a disproportionate penalty amount. The spokesperson described the gallery suggestions tool as simple, noting that device-level permission must be granted by the user before anything can happen and that this permission can be withdrawn through device settings at any time.
The authority's order requires Meta to disable the gallery suggestions feature by default and obtain separate, specific consent from users before it operates. The ruling applies to Italian users, with no direct consequences for Australian users stated.
Reporting: BBC, The Guardian, CNBC
Written by Pick & Scroll News from the reporting and documents linked above.
