Italy Fines Meta €805m Over Facebook App's Access to Android Users' Photo Galleries

Italy’s privacy watchdog has fined Meta €805 million (about $887 million, or £670 million). It found that a Facebook feature looked through Android users’ photo galleries without their specific consent.

The Italian Data Protection Authority, known as the Garante, announced the penalty on Saturday. The regulator says the Facebook app did not clearly tell around 20 million smartphone users in Italy that it could access their photos and videos. Meta has been given 60 days to change how the feature works.

The fine is one of the biggest ever imposed by an Italian authority on a technology company. Meta told the BBC it would appeal.

The feature at the centre of the case

The case concerns a Facebook for Android tool that pulls pictures and clips from the phone’s gallery and offers them as possible posts while people scroll. It has been available since 2023 and, according to the regulator, was switched on by default.

The Garante’s problem was with the permission behind it. Facebook asked for gallery access via one blanket permission spanning the entire app and a number of unrelated functions. The notice shown before the request was generic. It said the permission would enable other features, but it did not explain that one of them was gallery suggestions.

Once a user grants full access, the app can generally read the entire photo archive, and usually with no time limit. That is why the Garante treated it seriously. Italian privacy law, based on EU ePrivacy rules, treats the contents of a smartphone as part of a person’s private life. Reading what is stored there requires informed consent, even if nothing leaves the device.

What Meta must do now

The regulator has given Meta 60 days to:

• switch gallery suggestions off by default, including for users who already granted the permission;
• ask for consent through a separate, specific request that explains what the feature does, that it uses the gallery, and how to turn it off.

Meta must also report back to the Garante on its first steps within 30 days, and on the measures it has put in place within 90 days.

How the regulator reached €805m

The penalty is roughly 0.47% of Meta’s worldwide turnover. The Garante said it weighed “the high number of people affected” and that the problem was “still ongoing” for users who had not updated the app or who had already agreed to it.

The watchdog also pointed to “Meta’s lack of co-operation”, along with the length of the breach and a previous enforcement action against the company in 2019. Changes Meta made after the investigation began, which started in 2025, were counted in its favour, but the regulator judged them late and limited.

Meta: ‘We strongly disagree’

Meta rejected the findings. “We strongly disagree with the [regulator’s] assessment of the facts, its application of the law, and the disproportionate level of the fine,” the company told the BBC.

“This is a straightforward feature which helps people post photos and videos to Facebook. People must give permission on their device before it can operate, and they can change this permission at any time via their settings.”

The AI question left open

The decision does not settle one of the biggest concerns users have: whether photos in their galleries were used to train artificial intelligence. The investigation did not examine that, and Meta denies that gallery content was used this way.

The Garante has, however, kept the right to look separately at a newer feature launched in 2026, which processes gallery content in the cloud. Privacy campaigners are likely to watch that closely, as Meta and other tech companies are under pressure to find more data for their AI models.

Italy’s regulator has a history of taking on big tech over AI and data. In 2023 it became the first Western regulator to temporarily block ChatGPT, and in December 2024 it fined ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI, €15 million over how it handled personal data.

A tough run for Meta

The Italian fine follows an even bigger blow last month. According to the BBC, a US judge in New Mexico ordered Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, to pay $25 billion after finding it had spent years misleading the public about how it handled Facebook users’ data.

The Italian order applies only to Meta’s users in Italy. For Android users elsewhere, it is a reminder to check what the Facebook app is allowed to see. In the phone’s settings, open the app’s permissions and look at its access to photos and videos.

Sources: BBC News; DigitBin; TownPress (November 14, 2026).