Before I used an ad blocker I encountered a lot of malvertisting[0]. Now that I use an ad blocker and set it them up for friends and family random virus attacks, bluescreens, and other types of issues are a thing of the past.
I understand not all advertising agencies are responsible for this behavior but when these types of attacks can occur on mainstream websites such as Forbes[1], I frankly cannot trust any ad network to not infect my computer.
On most sites, at least. There are a few out there that go well out of their way to be annoying. Facebook likes to construct their ad text out of multiple randomly-named divs. TVTropes uses randomized IDs on their ad popover.
And if uBO doesn't cut the mustard, you can set up Nano Defender to work in tandem detecting this stuff, though it is a manual setup.
Though I personally can't tell how effective it is, since I also run Bypass-Paywalls and uMatrix, so I don't know how much credit to give to those extensions.
Sometimes it breaks a site and needs fine tuning of the settings, but its easy enough, and I've never found an ad or paywall or cookie popup or anything that I couldn't zap away.
The only blocking I do is turning off video autoplay in firefox (that sites like Tumbler somehow get around).
Yet the Washington Post blocks me as using an ad-blocker, possibly because I'm using Linux, possibly because of no autoplay. But altogether, it seems like anit-adblock efforts are going to start having more and more collateral damage.
I understand not all advertising agencies are responsible for this behavior but when these types of attacks can occur on mainstream websites such as Forbes[1], I frankly cannot trust any ad network to not infect my computer.
[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising [1]:https://www.engadget.com/2016/01/08/you-say-advertising-i-sa...