[Tutorials] Bypass those lame content lockers

I truly hate content lockers that have you do something in order to be able to access a page just so that those providing the stuff you’re accessing can build up email lists to spam the crap out of them or get more likes/shares on social media sites.

A large volume of the content provided for free is just used as bait to get emails and/or free likes/shares and most of the goals are achieved using content lockers through CSS and Javascript. Due to this I’ve decided to provide you all with a way to bypass the content lockers and get the content without having to signup, fill in your email or otherwise.

I will use as case study a site called Astroblu where some folks provide “free gifts” to their visitors in an attempt to lure them into signing up so that they can be spammed daily with all sorts of marketing offers from JVZoo or other networks. The last time I downloaded something from that site I filled in one of the email addresses I use for collecting spam and they’ve been spamming it ever since with all sorts of offers and of course with a link to a “gift” included with each email:

When you click the link you’re taken to a page without any content locker, but if you wish to download a different “gift”, as they’ve got a sidebar widget with links to previous gifts, you’ll be taken to a page with a content locker that has you signup if you want to download.

As you’ve probably imagined already, there’s a way around this and around any other type of content locker that follows the same rules.

To “unlock” the protected content you just need a browser like Chrome which has developer tools capabilities. Once the content locker is active just do a right click anywhere outside the center box, but onto the overlay filter and select “Inspect” (“Inspect Element” in some browsers), just like in the screenshot below:

A sidebar will then open with the HTML code making up the overlay selected already:

Right click again on the selected HTML code and click “Delete element” just like in the screenshot below:

And that’s about it, the overlay with the entire content locker will disappear and you’ll have full access to the page contents without having to signup, submit your email or like on Facebook.

This dirty hack should apply to all sorts of content lockers that work on the same principle.

P.S. As always, this hack is provided for educational purposes only.