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==Background==
These scams all typically operate on the same modus operandi—present themselves as a working emulator, typically with faked screenshots or video footage from a popular video game, (preferably a platform exclusive) running at full speed on a PC or a mobile platform, without glitches or other anomalies. The websites used to host the scam are also made to look and feel legitimate, with some such as PCSX4 going so far as to opening a GitHub repository to give further verisimilitude, especially to the average user. But of course, the legitimacy stops at the download page, where the impressionable or desperate user would be presented with a survey or a download for potentially unwanted programs or cryptocurrency miners. It's either that the "emulator" does "exist" but is merely an ''empty graphical shell'' written in Visual Basic .NET or C# coded to give out a fake error messageor a pretend menu, or the download does not exist at all; the survey just led the unwitting user into a wild goose chase with some malware sprinkled along the way.
As mentioned above, scammers would claim to be the first to successfully emulate a particular platform, even though there hasn't been much work done as far as reverse-engineering the original hardware goes; exceptions exist such as with the [[Game Boy Advance emulators|Game Boy Advance]] having its first emulator<ref>[https://www.zophar.net/gba/gbaemu.html GBAEmu]</ref> released ''a year'' before the actual hardware made it to store shelves, though that was due to a massive developer kit leak. And even then, it takes ''years'' to improve if not perfect an emulator's ability to run commercial games, especially for platforms with complex architectures such as the [[PlayStation 3 emulators|PlayStation 3]].
==Notable scams==
*PCSX4 - Appears to be a site hosted in France with the usual survey malarkey. It also is alleged to have been set up to steal PSIDs from legitimate PS4 consoles. There's also many other versions of this scam emulator.
*eMu3Ds - Uses the fake emulator shell scam. Installing the emulator leads to a fake UI which prompts users to fill up a survey for a non-existent BIOS. Site now hosts a likely infected build of [[Citra]].
*Artemis - Has a channel on YouTube demonstrating a purported PlayStation 3 emulator for Android. Youtuber MrSujano has made a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFKuoe3t4g8 short video] dispelling such claims, besides the fairly obvious fact that PS3 emulation is already system-intensive even on high-end systems, let alone commodity mobile devices.
