I always fought the idea of installing illegal software or cracking demo and trial versions.
Not just because it’s illegal and unethical, also because what might seem to be a money saver option can become a money or personal disaster.
Bitdefender analysts have recently uncovered a series of attacks that leverage office tools and image-editing software cracks to compromise computers, hijack crypto-currency wallets and exfiltrate information via the TOR network.
I’ll spare the technical details, you can read more at https://labs.bitdefender.com/blog.
what I want you to know is that by means of this crack, bad actors have been able to retrieve files from compromised computers (think of the excel spreadsheet with your family accounting, or the infamous list of your passwords or any other personal records), steal Firefox browser profile data (history, credentials and session cookies) and in some cases, the theft of Monero cypto-currency.
If you really don’t want to pay for a software, chances are that you can find legit alternatives at a reduced price or completely free.
I.e. LibreOffice vs. Microsoft Office, the Gimp vs Adobe Photoshop etc.
Do your research or ask the pros.