Italian regulators have fined social media giant Meta €805m (£670; $887m) for accessing Android users’ photos without their specific consent, according to the country’s Data Protection Authority. The authority said Meta did not properly tell about 20 million smartphone users that it could reach their photos and videos through a feature in the Facebook app.
The penalty is among the largest an Italian authority has ever handed to a technology firm. Meta has been given 60 days to switch the feature off by default and to ask users for consent separately.
How the photo suggestion feature worked
The case concerns a function that proposes pictures and clips from a user’s phone gallery as ideas for posts. Facebook sought access to those galleries through one authorisation covering the whole app. The regulator said an earlier notice did not make clear that this would also let Facebook generate suggestions from gallery images.
Regulator cites scale and lack of cooperation
In setting the penalty, the authority pointed to “the high number of people affected”. It said the matter remains open for users who have not updated the app and for those who have already agreed to the system. It also cited “Meta’s lack of co-operation”.
Meta’s earlier record penalty in the United States
Last month, Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, received its largest fine ever for its business practices. A US judge in New Mexico ordered the company to pay $25bn (£18.6bn) after finding it had spent years lying to the public about how it handled Facebook user data.
