Meta faces $880m fine in Italy over unauthorised access to Facebook users' photos

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has been fined 805 million euros ($880 million) by Italian regulators for accessing users' photographs and videos without obtaining their specific consent.

Italy's data protection authority said on Saturday that Meta had accessed photos, videos and related information belonging to Italian users through its Facebook app for Android devices without properly informing them or securing their explicit permission.

The penalty is among the largest fines imposed by an Italian regulator on a technology company. The case centres on Facebook's gallery suggestions feature, introduced in 2023, which recommends photographs and videos stored on users' phones for use in social media posts.

According to the regulator, Facebook sought permission to access a user's phone gallery through a single authorisation covering the entire application. Users were shown a general notification about enabling additional features but were not clearly told that granting permission would also allow the app to suggest content from their photo galleries.

Under the regulator's ruling, Meta must introduce a separate consent request for the feature and clearly explain that it requires access to users' photographs and videos. The company must also provide clear instructions on how users can disable it.

The authority said around 20 million Android users in Italy were affected by the practice. It also considered how long the alleged violation had continued, including users who had not updated their applications and those who had already consented to the feature.

Meta's lack of cooperation during the investigation was another factor considered when determining the penalty, the regulator said.

The fine represents approximately 0.4 per cent of Meta's annual revenue. The company reported revenue of $201 billion and a net profit of $60.5 billion in 2025.

The latest penalty follows a $25 billion ruling against Meta in New Mexico in late October over allegations that the company had misled residents for more than a decade about its handling of their personal data. Meta criticised the ruling, describing it as a tax on freedom of expression.

Italy has previously imposed a major penalty on a technology company, fining Amazon more than 1.1 billion euros in 2021 over competition law violations.