Not all ad blockers are created equal; some ad blockers show users ads which they have not consented to see. This is because some companies pay large sums of money to have their ads whitelisted by ad blockers.
Eyeo, which owns Adblock Plus (the world’s most popular free adblocker), has accepted fees to have non-intrusive ads whitelisted for Adblock Plus users since its 'Acceptable Ads' programme was established in 2011. According to a Financial Times report, companies which have paid for whitelisting include Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
In 2015, the Acceptable Ads programme was opened to competing ad blocks, with AdBlock quickly joining the programme and automatically permitting whitelisted ad companies to track and target its users without their consent.
Wyden has argued that this practice is unethical because users are not aware of them, with millions of people having downloaded ad blockers which claimed to block all ads. In a letter to Federal...