From the IndustryPace archive. Originally published February 16, 2011. Revisited October 2026.

Is Content Unlocking the Next Big Scam?

Want the download? Take a survey first. In 2011 the survey wall was the affiliate business's newest machine for turning curiosity into a phone bill.

By Pesach Lattin

The original text of this post was lost when IndustryPace went dark. This page keeps the original headline and date, rebuilds the subject from the public record, and says what happened next.

The pitch was simple. Free movie, free game cheat, free iPad, free whatever. All you had to do was complete one quick offer to unlock it. The offer was the business.

Where it came from

In October 2009, TechCrunch's "Scamville" series showed how social games let players earn virtual currency by completing lead-generation offers. Its examples included an "IQ test" that quietly signed users up for a $9.99 a month mobile subscription, and a "free" CD that led to a $189.95 charge. Days later, a Zynga co-founder said about a third of its revenue came from offers. Zynga pulled them, and Facebook tightened enforcement.

The model did not die. It moved. Content lockers, sometimes called gateways, applied it to everything: downloads, videos, fake giveaway posts on Facebook. The content was the bait, and a CPA network paid the affiliate for every completed survey or sign-up, whether or not the person got anything at the end.

How it aged

Researchers later measured it. A 2013 George Mason University study found 73% of working Facebook spam links in its data were survey scams paid through CPA networks, with more than half of those traced to four networks, and argued the networks were the best place to stop it. In December 2013 the FTC sued Tatto Media and its principals over mobile cramming, unauthorized $9.99 monthly charges driven by fake quizzes, and got an asset freeze.

Content lockers are still for sale on gray-hat affiliate forums in 2026. The answer to this headline was yes, and the reason it lasted is the same reason it started: the network gets paid on the sign-up, and nobody downstream is paid to ask how the sign-up happened.

This page rebuilds a February 2011 IndustryPace post whose original text is not available. Facts come from TechCrunch (2009), the 2013 USENIX LEET paper by Clark and McCoy, and the FTC's 2013 Tatto action; FTC allegations are allegations. The author co-founded LeadsCon and has worked in lead generation for about 20 years.