Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, fined Meta Platforms Ireland Limited 805 million euros on November 14, 2026, PPC Land reports. According to the Garante, the Facebook app for Android accessed photos, videos and related metadata on Italian users' phones without specific consent and without properly informing them, through a feature called "Get tips from your gallery while browsing Facebook", available since 2023. The authority says about 20 million Android users in Italy were affected and that the fine equals about 0.47% of the group's worldwide turnover.
The Garante found that the feature was on by default and relied on one app-wide gallery permission introduced by a generic notice to "enable other features." It applied Article 122 of the Italian Privacy Code, which transposes the ePrivacy Directive, and said the rule requires consent for any access to phone data, regardless of whether data is transmitted or harm results. Meta must require separate consent and keep the feature off by default within 60 days, with reports due at 30 and 90 days. The release does not say when those periods start.
The Garante rejected Meta's request to hand the case to Ireland's Data Protection Commission, saying ePrivacy rules do not provide for the one-stop shop. PPC Land notes that a Rome court annulled the Garante's 15 million euro GDPR fine against OpenAI in March 2026 on lead-authority grounds. The proceedings did not examine whether gallery content trained AI, which Meta denies, and the Garante says it may separately assess a 2026 feature that processes gallery content in the cloud. The release includes no response from Meta.