Italy fines Meta $880m over photo privacy

Italian regulators have fined Meta 805 million euros ($887m) for accessing users’ photos without their consent.

The Facebook app on Android devices “accessed photos, videos and associated metadata stored on Italian users’ smartphones without specific consent and without informing them”, Garante, the Italian data privacy authority, said Saturday.

The issue relates specifically to the “Get suggestions from gallery when browsing Facebook” feature, which suggests photos and videos from the phone’s gallery for posting while browsing.

This feature violates the Italian law implementing the EU’s ePrivacy directive, the authority said.

Garante said the app’s process for collecting consent is too generic and does not allow users to fully understand the specific permissions they are allowing by accepting. The suggestions option was also enabled by default.

The figure of 805 million euros is by far the largest fine ever imposed by the Italian regulator.

Garante said Meta must fix the unclear consent notification and disable it being set by default, suggesting that roughly 20 million Italian Android users could have been affected by it.

The regulator also highlighted a “lack of cooperation” by Meta and said an earlier violation, which resulted in a 2019 fine, was a contributing factor in their decision.

The amount is roughly 0.47 percent of Meta’s global turnover.

The proceedings did not address the possible use of content to train artificial intelligence, which Meta denies.

Meta has not yet publicly commented on the matter, and it has the right to appeal the regulator’s decision.