I've also been online and pirating for 25+ years and your bragging horseshit is hilarious
Fuck off mate, we've all had browser toolbars and had to reinstall windows multiple times in the past. Not so common now but before it was part of the deal
There's a lot of malware that just chills in the background and hides itself well (e.g., auto-shuts down whenever task manager is opened), and does little to impact you aside from using some of your system's resources.
Think being part of a botnet used for DDOS attacks, or a cryptominer that runs whenever you aren't using much of your hardware's capabilities.