Italy's data protection agency, the Garante, said on Saturday it had fined Meta Platforms 805 million euros ($887 million) after finding that the company had accessed Android users' photographs and videos without obtaining their consent or informing them, Reuters reported from Milan on November 14.
Source: Reuters, Nov 14, 2026
The penalty targets a Facebook app feature that suggested content from users' personal galleries that they could post. The authority said Meta had access to Android users' photos and videos through that gallery-suggestions feature, which was switched on by default.
Yaani: 805 million euros is about 80.5 crore euros, and $887 million is about 88.7 crore US dollars — by far the largest fine the Italian Garante has imposed, according to the authority.
What the regulator found
The Garante identified three main problems: there was no specific consent for the gallery-suggestions feature, users were not told clearly what the permission was for, and the feature was activated by default. The case was decided under Article 122 of Italy's Privacy Code, which implements the European Union's ePrivacy rules on information stored on a user's device.
Source: TelecomLead, Nov 14, 2026
The investigation began in July 2025, following a complaint from a consumer protection organisation in Bolzano. The feature at the centre of the case, called 'Get suggestions from gallery when browsing Facebook', was introduced in 2023 and scans a phone's gallery to propose photos and videos for posting.
What Meta must do now
Meta has 60 days to disable the feature by default — including for users who previously granted general gallery access — and to seek users' consent separately and specifically. The company must report its first corrective steps within 30 days and communicate the measures it has adopted within 90 days, the authority said.
The investigation did not cover the possible use of the gallery content to train artificial intelligence models, a practice Meta denied, the authority said. It added that it reserved the right to assess separately a new feature, launched in 2026, that allows content from users' galleries to be processed in the cloud.
Meta was not immediately available for comment when Reuters reported the decision on Saturday. The ruling is one of the largest privacy penalties imposed on a social media company in Italy, and it lands on the same platform millions of Punjabi and Indian families in Europe use every day to share family photographs — a reminder that a single broad app permission can open an entire phone gallery.
The Garante's order is not only about the fine. Meta must turn the gallery feature OFF by default and ask again, separately, before it can look at a user's photos — a consent standard privacy regulators across Europe will be watching.