I trust the pirate community infinitely more than I trust any big corporation, Microsoft, EA, Steam etc.

Imo it's more common for the "legit" copy of the software to have dodgy spyware and such in it, which is removed by the cracker.

That corporate spyware won’t steal your credit card. I’d rather have my data stolen than money

I'm curious now. I have actually never heard of malware of any kind being put into a release by a reputable scene group, cracker or repacker. Eg. Empress, Fitgirl.

Does anyone have any links to instances of this happening?

I don't have an example from reputable crackers, but the could exit-scam at any point.

Here's an example of malware delivered via purportedly cracked software.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ransomware-hits-research-facility...

Cheers for link! but there is almost zero info about the cracked program or malware, its not really a data point at all imo.

Also, from the description there is, it kinda sounds like guy just googled and downloaded a random exe from internet.