Key insights
- Italy's data protection authority has fined Meta Platforms Inc. €805 million for accessing Android users' photos and videos without proper consent. Meta must disable the feature by default and obtain explicit user permission within 60 days. The fine represents approximately 0.47% of Meta's global revenue. The investigation did not cover AI training, but a separate feature involving cloud processing of gallery content may be investigated later.
Investing.com -- Italy's data protection authority has fined Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) €805 million ($887 million) after finding that the company accessed photographs and videos stored on Android users' devices without obtaining their permission or adequately informing them.
The authority said Meta gained access to users' personal media galleries through a Facebook app feature that recommended photographs and videos for users to share on the social networking platform. The company had not secured separate consent from users for this access, it added.
Under the ruling, Meta has 60 days to switch off the feature by default and obtain users' consent separately before accessing their personal gallery content. The company was not immediately available for comment.
The investigation, which began in 2025, did not examine whether the photographs and videos accessed through the feature were used to train artificial intelligence models, the Italian authority said. Meta has denied using the content for that purpose.
However, the regulator reserved the right to investigate separately another feature introduced in 2026 that allows users' gallery content to be processed through cloud-based systems.
The €805 million penalty represents about 0.47% of Meta's global revenue, according to the authority.
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