Italy fines Meta $887M for accessing Android users’ photos

Italian regulators have imposed an $887 million penalty on Meta Platforms, marking one of the largest fines an Italian authority has ever levied against a technology company. The Italian Data Protection Authority announced the 805 million euro sanction — valued at $887 million by CNBC and The Washington Post, and $880 million by CBS News — following an investigation that found the company's Facebook application accessed the personal photographs, videos, and related metadata of roughly 20 million Android users in Italy without obtaining proper or specific consent.

The penalty underscores a mounting global regulatory pushback against how major social media platforms handle private device data under strict European privacy frameworks. Investigators determined that the data collection was tied to a feature named Get suggestions from gallery when browsing Facebook, which was enabled by default. According to the Italian regulator, Meta gained entry to personal galleries through a single, app-wide authorization notice that failed to clearly inform users that their private media would be scanned to generate posting ideas.

How did the Facebook feature violate privacy laws?

The regulatory scrutiny centers on how the app gathered content from smartphone galleries without individual, explicit opt-ins. Investigators found that the gallery access was bundled into a broader permission covering multiple functions within the Facebook application. The Italian Data Protection Authority stated that European privacy law protects the smartphone as part of a person’s private sphere and strictly requires free and informed consent before an application can tap into its contents.

The investigation, which commenced in 2025, specifically examined the automatic suggestions tool. Regulators noted that the infraction remained ongoing for individuals who had not updated the application, as well as for users who had previously granted broader system permissions without realizing the specific implications. Alongside the financial penalty, the authority issued a strict 60-day deadline forcing Meta to disable the feature by default and require separate, explicit user consent for any future gallery access.

What does Meta say and what are the financial stakes?

Meta strongly rejected the regulatory findings, calling the punishment excessive and announcing its intention to appeal the decision. In an emailed statement, a company spokesperson defended the mechanism as a routine utility designed to simplify media sharing. This is a simple feature that helps people share photos and videos on Facebook, the spokesperson said, adding that users must grant permission on their device before the feature can operate, and they can change that permission at any time in their settings.

The company also argued that the regulator's assessment of the facts and application of the law was flawed, labeling the financial demand disproportionate. According to calculations by the Italian data protection agency, the 805 million euro fine equates to approximately 0.47% of the technology group's global revenue. Regulators arrived at this figure by weighing the massive scale of the affected population alongside what they characterized as Meta's lack of co-operation throughout the course of the probe.

Are other privacy penalties adding to the pressure?

The Italian ruling arrives on the heels of other major legal and financial blows for the social media conglomerate across multiple jurisdictions. Last month, a judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay a $25 billion penalty after a jury concluded the company had spent years deceiving the public regarding its data privacy policies, a verdict the firm also contested. Furthermore, the Italian authority noted that the investigation did not examine whether the harvested user content was utilized to train artificial intelligence models, a practice that Meta has denied, though regulators reserved the right to separately evaluate a newer cloud-processing feature launched in 2026.

While CBS News reported that Amazon previously received a larger initial fine of more than 1.1 billion euros, roughly $1.2 billion, in 2021 for competition law breaches that were later reduced on appeal to 752 million euros, or about $829 million, the latest penalty against Meta stands out as a severe rebuke specifically targeted at personal privacy violations on mobile operating systems. With the 60-day compliance window now ticking down, Meta faces a dual challenge of dismantling its default settings in Italy while preparing a formal legal defense against the penalty.