An OPSEC community would probably say no, so I probably don't need to ask in those communities. But I'm curious about a (digital) pirate's perspective on this issue...

I mean, the sources listed here are supposedly "safe" right? But honestly, how much would you trust these "safe" sources?

When doing sensitive tasks like banking or filing taxes, do you:

Use a different OS on the same machine? (Dualboot)
Or put the pirated content inside a virtual machine?
Or just use a completely separate computer?

And since PC is much different than a Smartphone:

Would the extra sandboxing on Smartphones make pirating games on a Smartphone much safer compared to on a PC? (Not that there are much mobile games worth playing, just curious)

(PC in this context referring to all personal computers, regardless of OS)

And last question:

Non-installed/non-executable files such as .mp4 .mkv .mp3 .pdf .epub, are mostly safe right? I mean, you are using another program to opening it, not executing a file, there aren't much attack vectors as long as the video player / ebook viewer is up to date right? (Or am I understanding it wrong?)

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[–] primemagnus@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago

Strangely enough I’ve found that some kid in India or Russia distributing his crack doesn’t do it to control my PC or to infect it.

Big corporations that install root kits or use hyper invasive cheat software (even when no competitive mode even exists) are far more insidious and untrustworthy.

I worry more about the hidden telemetry of big apps more than some crack being infected. Hell even MS virus scan will throw up false flags because the software just isn’t a registered dev or will quarantine an exe in error (libremonitor for example).