I realize how easy an infostealer can happen and I wonder if there are steps anyone takes to identify if a release is fine?

I've been fine for 10-15 years, but after seeing quite a bit of occurrences lately about infostealers, mainly in gaming packs, I've been starting to wonder. Is there reason to still worry when downloading in our community and RU? I tend to see comments and business as usual on these releases, but still. I know it's always gonna be a gamble, but has it happened to you just though downloading from these two places? I start to think about how crazy it is disabling my Windows protection and raw doggin

 

Imagine the worst-case scenario: you turn on your PC and it’s frozen—you’re infected. In the worst case, you don’t even realize it, and you become part of a botnet or your identity gets stolen. You’ll find yourself thinking, "If only I had made a backup." Make sure you have a top-notch, full backup of your C: drive, and save important programs and data to an external storage device.

 

For those gaming downloads I would use an antivirus that is easy to disable.
Be aware of possible false positives, check the source if they have comments. The most popular the download site the most comments will be and more chances of users finding troubles...