Verizon's advertising business Oath — which owns Yahoo and AOL — has been pitching advertisers a service that scans more than 200 million inboxes for data on consumer buying habits.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the service benefits advertisers by identifying consumers who buy specific services or receive some targeted commercial correspondence. For example, Yahoo users who receive emails about driving for Lyft might be identified as self-employed.

Then tagging data are placed on these users' computers so that advertisers know how to target ads specifically to them.

Most companies have stopped scanning inboxes for data because it is a public relations nightmare and a privacy atrocity.  But since these words already describe your average US telco, this does not matter to Verizon's Oath.

"Email is an expensive system", Doug Sharp, VP of data, measurements and insights at Oath, told The Journal. "I think it's reasonable and ethical to expect the value exchange if you've got this mail service and there is advertising going on."

Oath's privacy policy also allows for Yahoo human employees to review sections of some commercial emails too.

These practices have raised questions and concerns about data privacy in the industry, according to The Journal. Really though they should be raising questions about how US telco monopolies are able to exist with government blessing and authority.