# Italy Hits Tech Giant With €805M Meta Privacy Fine

- Link: https://the-timenews.com/italy-meta-privacy-fine/
- Published: 2026-11-14T16:31:09+00:00
- Author: The Time News

Italian regulators discovered that Facebook quietly rifled through personal phone
albums without explicit permission, triggering a penalty that breaks all previous
national privacy records. The watchdog hit the tech giant with an **805 million 
euros** ($887m) meta privacy fine after finding that the social network accessed
private media stored on local handsets.

The breach strikes directly at basic mobile privacy. If you used the Facebook app
on Android devices in Italy, your personal gallery was opened up to the platform
by default, leaving roughly **20 million Italian Android users** exposed to automatic
file access.

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This penalty amounts to roughly 0.47 percent of Meta’s global turnover. It forces
the company to overhaul how it handles photo permissions and immediately halt setting
automatic media access on mobile hardware.

## How the Facebook gallery scanner operated

The investigation focused on a specific feature named “Get suggestions from gallery
when browsing Facebook.” The tool looked through a user’s local phone files to offer
automated suggestions of photos and videos to post while people scrolled their feeds.

Garante, the Italian data privacy authority, found that the tool did far more than
just look at photos. The application harvested photos, videos, and associated metadata
stored directly on smartphones without obtaining specific consent and without informing
owners beforehand.

Regulators determined that the feature directly breaches the Italian legislation
that implements the European Union’s ePrivacy directive. Inspectors found that the
consent dialogue presented to users was far too generic, making it impossible for
people to understand which permissions they were granting when they tapped through
screens.

## How the meta privacy fine set a national record

The 805 million euro sanction stands as by far the largest financial penalty Garante
has ever delivered. The regulator pointed to several aggravating factors when deciding
on the final sum.

Investigators cited a clear “lack of cooperation” from the tech giant during the
proceedings. The authority also noted that an earlier infraction, which led to a
regulatory fine in 2019, weighed heavily against the firm as a contributing factor.

Because the prompt was enabled by default across mobile installations, millions 
surrendered access to their personal libraries without ever making a deliberate 
choice. Regulators ordered the company to eliminate the default setting and overhaul
its consent warnings to clearly state what data the platform seeks to view.

## The artificial intelligence question

The investigation remained tightly focused on handset access and consent violations
rather than algorithm development. Regulators stated that the case did not address
whether user media was scraped to feed artificial intelligence systems, an activity
that Meta denies.

The watchdog chose to penalise the unauthorized collection itself, establishing 
that taking personal media without clear permission breaks European standards regardless
of what happens to the files afterward.

## What happens next

Meta must now rebuild the consent screens on its mobile software and turn off default
gallery access across the country. Meta has not yet commented publicly on the ruling,
but the company retains the right to contest the decision before an administrative
court.

_Source: [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/14/italy-fines-meta-880m-over-photo-privacy)_

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