Facebook Group: Italy imposes 805 million euros fine on Meta

Rome. The Facebook group Meta has been fined 805 million euros in Italy for unauthorized access to photos and videos of smartphone users. The Garante authority accuses the US company of not sufficiently informing users of the Android app and not obtaining effective consent. Around 20 million Android users in Italy are affected, it said. According to the authorities, the 805 million euros correspond to around 0.47 percent of the group's global sales in 2024.

According to the report, the investigation began in July 2025 after a tip from the consumer protection center in Bolzano. They affected a Facebook function that has been available since 2023, which displays photos and videos from the smartphone gallery as suggestions for your own posts. Access to the gallery could be enabled for multiple functions with a single, general release. This enabled the app to read out the entire photo archive of a smartphone, including the metadata - usually permanently.

Meta had questioned the competence of the Italian supervisory authority and referred to the data protection authority in Ireland, where the group has its European headquarters. Garante rejected the objection. Meta must now obtain users' express consent to access their photo galleries within 60 days and deactivate the function by default - even for users who have already granted general access permission.