When talking about the Internet, privacy is too often followed by the word “violation.” There is very little that cannot be monitored and monetized in some way online. So when the CEO of a major tech company criticizes its rivals for not safeguarding customer data, there’s bound to be some hypocrisy.

Tim Cook, speaking at the EPIC Champions of Freedom event in Washington, D.C., earlier this week called out many of Apple’s top competitors in Silicon Valley for their privacy practices.

“They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it,” TechCrunch quoted him as saying(Opens in a new window). “We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”

Cook acknowledged that Apple is amassing vast (but selective) amounts of data about health, finances, and behavior about its customers, but vowed that customer privacy and security is tantamount. “We don’t just grab everything, so we’re not the richest target for those who want access to that kind of data,” he said. “And for encryption — well we’re continuing to do the right thing, and we are moving forward. In an era where our information is digital, portable and sought-after more than ever, we want to build products that keep people’s information safe.”

There have, however, been several notable incidents where Apple customer information got into the wrong hands.

Celebrity Photo Hack
In his speech, Cook made a thinly veiled reference to the recently launched Google Photos. “You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose,” he said.

That’s more than a touch of hubris considering that Apple was recently caught up in a vicious news cycle with hundreds of nude celeb photos being culled from iCloud. Apple insisted that the leak was not the result of a vulnerability in its own systems. Instead, the company suggested that hackers guessed the celebs’ passwords. Still, it later pledged to boost security alerts for iCloud users.

PRISM
When Edward Snowden released details of the NSA’s monitoring of citizens through PRISM, Apple was named as one of the companies providing the NSA with a “back door” to customer data. Apple released a statement(Opens in a new window) that said the first the company heard of PRISM was when news organizations contacted it following the release of documents. But the very nature of these programs means that tech companies like Apple are not allowed to discuss them publicly, something Cupertino and its rivals have pushed the government to change.

Sharing Consumer Data With Advertisers
Apple was sued five years ago by users who were upset that the company shared devices’ Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) with app developers. The UDID is tied to a user’s name, password, contacts, age, gender, and location. In response, Apple did away with providing the UDID to app developers; iOS 7 also added the ability to limit ad tracking.

Location Tracking
Being followed online is one thing, but Apple took a major hit in 2011 amidst reports that devices running iOS 4 were gathering location and storing it in an unencrypted manner. Apple had to testify before Congress and was hit with another lawsuit over the issue, which it fixed with a software update.

Contacts
In 2012, it was revealed that the Path app was uploading a user’s entire address book without permission. That prompted members of Congress to question Apple “about whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts.” Apple responded that “any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”