Italy fines Meta €805 million over Android gallery access
Why it matters: Regulators said about 20 million users in Italy were affected, and Meta has 60 days to turn the feature off by default and seek separate consent.
Italy’s data protection authority fined Meta Platforms 805 million euros after finding Facebook accessed photos, videos and related metadata stored on Android devices in Italy without specific, informed consent. The case centered on a feature introduced in 2023 that suggested images from a user’s phone gallery for posting on Facebook. Regulators said Meta bundled consent for multiple functions, used notices that did not clearly explain gallery access, and left the feature enabled by default. The authority said roughly 20 million Android users in Italy may have been affected. Meta plans to appeal. The investigation began in 2025 and did not cover whether gallery content was used to train AI models, though regulators said they may separately examine a cloud-processing feature launched in 2026.