Italy’s data protection authority has fined Meta €805 million (approximately $887 million) for accessing photos, videos and related information stored on Android users’ smartphones without obtaining specific consent or adequately informing them.
The penalty relates to a Facebook feature called “Get suggestions from gallery when browsing Facebook”, introduced in 2023, which suggests photos and videos from users’ phone galleries as potential posts while they browse the platform.
According to Italy’s data protection authority, Facebook obtained access to users’ photo galleries through a single permission covering multiple app functions. The notification requesting permission was too general and did not clearly explain that users were also authorising access to their personal photo galleries.
The authority also found that the gallery suggestions feature was enabled by default, potentially affecting around 20 million Android users in Italy.
As part of its decision, the regulator has ordered Meta to introduce a separate and specific consent request for the feature and ensure it is disabled by default. The company has been given 60 days to comply.
The authority said the size of the fine took into account the large number of users affected, the duration of the violation, a previous regulatory decision against the company and what it described as Meta’s lack of cooperation during the investigation.
The fine represents approximately 0.47% of Meta’s global annual turnover.
Meta has disagreed with the regulator’s assessment and said it intends to appeal the decision.
The investigation did not examine whether users’ photos were used to train artificial intelligence models. (Newswire)