The world is facing a pivotal moment in the battle for online privacy as a scramble to collect users’ data risks making society “less innovative and less human”, the chief executive of Apple has said.

Tim Cook warned that tech firms and governments have a “profound responsibility” to protect users from “data-hungry companies” that are determined to take their information without permission.

He also urged regulators to halt attempts to let users sidestep Apple’s privacy and security rules by downloading third-party apps through a process known as “sideloading”.

Apple has faced pressure from competition authorities in the US and Europe to open up their services to greater competition, amid concerns over fees of up to 30pc that some developers must pay on its App Store.

Speaking at the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ Global Privacy Summit in Washington, Mr Cook said: “A world without privacy is less imaginative, less empathetic, less innovative. Less human.

“At this very moment, companies are mining data about details of our lives. The shops, restaurants we frequent, the causes we support, the websites we chose to read.

“They don’t believe we should have a choice in the matter. They don’t believe they should have permission to peer so deeply into our personal lives.

“Who would stand for such a thing if it was unfolding in the physical world? Imagine opening your computer and a stranger is watching your every keystroke. You wouldn’t call that a service, you would call that an emergency.”

Unlike Google’s Android operating systems that allow sideloading, Apple has fiercely defended the status quo of checking all software before it is uploaded onto its App Store.

America’s Open Markets Act would force Apple to allow sideloading, while Europe’s Digital Markets Act has previously included conditions that would make the tech giant enforce more competition on the app store.  

Mr Cook added: “Here in Washington and elsewhere, policymakers are taking steps in the name of competition that would force Apple to let apps onto iPhone that circumvent the App Store through a process called sideloading.

“That means data-hungry companies would be able to avoid our privacy rules and once again track our users against their will. It would also potentially give bad actors a way around the comprehensive security protections we have put in place, putting them in direct contact with our users.

“If we are forced to let unvetted apps onto iPhone, the unintended consequences will be profound.

“And when we see that, we feel an obligation to speak up and to ask policymakers to work with us to advance goals that I truly believe we share, without undermining privacy in the process.”

Sideloading has been a major bone of contention between Apple and the EU. A Commission spokesman said last month that the bloc’s Digital Markets Act would force Apple to let smartphone users “also opt for other safe app stores”.

The spokesman, Johannes Bahrke, said: “This freedom includes being able to opt for alternative sources of apps on your smartphone.”

While there are technical methods that enable sideloading on iPhones, they are aimed at developers of new apps rather than consumers.

Apple’s main smartphone rival Google already allows its users to choose where they get their apps from. Users of the Android operating system must turn off a security setting before being able to install apps from outside its Play Store.