Apple CEO takes shots at Facebook & Google over data collection

Apple's CEO, Tim Cook has taken thinly veiled shots at companies like Facebook and Google whose business models rely on acquiring user information.

Cook claimed that Apple is not interested in being a "treasure trove" for agencies like the NSA - and claimed he was offended by accusations that Cupertino is out to collect user data.

"Our business is not based on having information about you. You're not our product. Our product are these [devices], and this watch, and Macs, and so forth. And so we run a very different company," Cook said during a interview on The Charlie Rose Show.

"I think everyone has to ask, how do companies make their money? Follow the money. And if they're making money mainly by collecting gobs of personal data, I think you have a right to be worried. And you should really understand what's happening to that data, and the companies I think should be very transparent."

Switching to the topic of privacy, Cook claimed that this will become an increasingly important issue over the next year.

"I think people have a right to privacy For us, in the Snowden thing - we wanted instantly to be totally transparent because there were rumours in [the press] that people had back doors to our servers. None of that is true. Zero. They would have to cart us out in a box before we would do that."

Despite the CEO's strong stance on privacy, the firm is reeling from a hack on its iCloud servers earlier this month, which resulted in intimate pictures of high-profile celebrities being posted to the internet.