Italy fines Meta $880 mn over photo privacy: authority

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Italian regulators fined Facebook parent company Meta 805 million euros ($880 million) for accessing users' photos without their "specific" consent, the country's data protection authority said on Nov. 14.

A Meta logo is shown on a video screen at LlamaCon 2025, an AI developer conference, in Menlo Park, Calif., April 29, 2025. (AP File Photo)

A company spokesperson said "we strongly disagree" with the assessment by the regulators "and the disproportionate level of the fine".

In late October, authorities in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for having misled the state's residents for more than a decade over use of their data, a record fine for the company, which slammed it as a "tax" on freedom of expression.

The latest fine is among the largest an Italian authority has ever imposed on a tech giant.

In 2021, Amazon received a more than 1.1-billion-euro fine for breaching competition law.

According to Italy's regulator, Facebook requested access to the gallery via a single authorization valid for the entire app, preceded by a generic notice requesting enabling of other features, which did not allow users to understand that they were also authorising suggestions from their gallery.

It imposed a fine amounting to roughly 0.4 per cent of the group's annual turnover, which hit $201 billion in 2025, for a net profit of $60.5 billion.

Blasts and sirens rang out over Bahrain and authorities urged residents to seek shelter on Nov. 15 as Iran's Guards said they had attacked a U.S. military base in the Gulf nation.

Electric vehicle growth has hit a speed bump in the United States, but hybrid autos are gaining market share thanks to the jump in fuel prices due to the Iran war.

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