Italy Fines Meta €805M For Opening 20M Facebook Users’ Photo Galleries

Italy’s privacy regulator fined Meta €805 million after the Facebook app on Android phones reached into about 20 million Italian users’ photo galleries without their specific consent.

Key Takeaways

• The fine of €805 million is about 0.47% of Meta’s worldwide group turnover
• About 20 million Android users in Italy were affected by a gallery suggestions feature running since 2023
• Meta has 60 days to ask for separate consent and switch the feature off by default
• The regulator said Meta cooperated poorly during the investigation

The Garante per la protezione dei dati personali announced the penalty on Nov. 14 against Meta Platforms Ireland Limited. The case covers a Facebook feature that suggests photos and videos from a user’s phone gallery as post ideas while they scroll.

Also Read: Meta Puts Millions More Teens Behind Stricter Instagram Rules

How Facebook Got Into The Gallery

According to the regulator, Facebook asked for gallery access through one permission that covered the whole app and several features with different purposes. That request came after a vague prompt to “enable other features”, which never made clear that gallery suggestions were part of it.

The feature was switched on by default. Once users granted full access, the app could read their entire photo library, generally for good. The regulator said neither users nor the authority itself could check what data was actually used.

The investigation began in July 2025 after a complaint from a consumer group in Bolzano, and the authority ran its own technical tests on the app.

Why Italy Acted Instead Of Ireland

Meta argued that Ireland’s data regulator should handle the case, since Meta’s European arm is based there. The Italian authority rejected that. It acted under the Italian rule that puts a phone’s contents inside a person’s private sphere, which comes from the EU’s ePrivacy law, and that law has no single lead regulator for companies operating across the bloc.

Under that rule, any access to what is stored on a phone needs free and informed consent, whether or not the data leaves the device or anyone is harmed.

What Made The Fine Bigger

The regulator cited the number of people affected, the fact that the breach is still running for users who have not updated the app or already gave permission, an earlier 2019 measure against Meta and Meta’s poor cooperation. It gave some credit for changes Meta made after the complaint but called them late, since they only reach users who update the app.

If Meta misses the 60-day deadline, the feature cannot be switched on for anyone who has not given valid consent.

The AI Question Left Open

The case did not look at whether gallery photos are used to train AI, and Meta denies doing so. The regulator said it may separately examine a new feature launched in 2026 that processes gallery content in the cloud.

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