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It all depends on where you get the crack or patched files from that should be of most concern.
You download a patched file you find on google, theres always a higher than average possibility of it being backdoored. If you aim to get the <highest> level release, theres very little chance that there'll be anything malicious about it.
People who post things themselves on their websites don't particularly care how their reputation is affected, they can always make a new website or change their nick amongst a plethora of other things. The major warez groups have a lot to lose from releasing software that contains a backdoor, the entire chain is based on trust. If its found that a member willfully sets out to backdoor a crack, that member will be dropped from the scene, losing a lot more than they stand to gain. What, they get access to a bunch of people who will likely end up formatting anyway? Being that high in the chain gives them a lot more to try to hold onto than petty things like that. Chances are that piece of software will be found to be backdoored before it gets past the topsites, anyhow.
What I do is only look for complete software releases, not cracks, or patches, and find at least independant sources. Releases commonly have .sfv files nowadays, so download the piece of software and check it with the crc. If it fails, its either corrupt or hacked. If it doesn't fail, don't install it instantly, check it with another sfv for that release. Its easy to tamper with plaintext crc checks, its hard to replace every sfv floating around with their modified one.
I tend to only get things off ftp's or IRC (which isn't as bad as you'd expect). Multiple files on multiple independant servers makes it easy to verify the integrity of whatever you're downloading.
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