During this article I will download a few "free full versions". See whether the threat is real, or just something made up, perhaps all this talk about risks is just to scare people into not taking the chance at all? I will grab the resultant warning and you can make up your own mind.
Do you ever download full version software that is accompanied by a crack? Obtain copies from market stalls, or that your mate copied from his? Are you really likely to become a victim of some malware, trojan, or virus, if not worse, by doing so?
The short answer, as you will see, Is that it's very possible.
Ok, well for a start, if the app you are using connects to the internet, and then It's likely the vendor would be notified. People do get reported to their ISP.
Not enough to bother you?
Money is probably the biggest loss you face, though losing time, and what may be irreplaceable data, is always a possibility, just to make it interesting.
So let's have a look at what people say in defence, or just ignorance:
"I've downloaded cracks before and never found nothing". Ever hear somebody say that? Chances are, they don't have the measures in place to detect what's going on out of sight, and it's not the average Joe that has the required measures, by default.
"Cracks are detected because the AV vendor has been paid to say so. There's no risk at all". Well, I wouldn't put much faith in that statement. Some people will tell you these are false positives, and you should disable your anti-virus in order to run the crack. The self proclaimed "experts" in this area. These are likely the same knowledgeable folk that will tell you it's ok to disable your firewall to obtain a download, and you know that's something you never ever do, right?
Supposing your anti-virus flags a download as a possibility, or a probable variant of a know risk? This is the heuristics detection at work. Is it a false positive or real danger? You have no choice in the matter, since the download is interrupted, but surprisingly, users will disable the AV until the download completes!
"As long as you have all the windows updates, up to date anti-virus and everything else, you will be protected". Simply not true. People still get infections just by casual surfing alone. If you're about to run a dodgy exe file on your desktop, what does that imply?
You might come across other tales of people getting away with it. They must be lucky! More often than not, they're the ones with the slow, problematic machine, and all that implies.