So.. you want to play with something more obscure than Intuit. If you want to go a little off the beaten-path, how do you manage this risk?
Here are some suggestions. Keep in mind nothing on the connected digital world is completely risk free, but reduced risk is better than just stupid.
Google *software name* security. Does what you find make you more or less worried about running the software?
The bad news is this step requires you to download the software. If you have a lab or an isolated sandbox, this is a good time to use it. If not, this can be fine JUST DON'T EXECUTE IT YET. After you download it, go to the upload page at VirusTotal. Now you can drag the file into the VirusTotal page and see what the Security Industry has to say. This costs nothing and is very fast.
Now there are a lot of security companies offering their opinions. Sometimes one or two companies report some scary findings. Full disclosure-- I've installed software after seeing a couple red-flags here. The flags just caused me to do a bit more research. Take a look at the detail of the flagged findings and make your own judgement.
Those first two suggestions are simple, fast, and free. If you don't do them .. well, if you've read this far you care enough that you will definitely do them going forward. This next suggestion requires a bit more nerdiness and more commitment of time. My advice to the average Joe is to ignore this section. If your spider senses are telling you that you should do this step--just don't run the software, delete it, and move on with your life.
If you're still reading--consider running the software in a temporary environment--a contained environment that prevents badness from spreading to your trusted systems and that you can securely delete when you are finished testing. You can use a sandboxing program. I use Sandboxie fairly often. I don't use it so much for running suspect code, more for running a portable browser and touring the darker side. You could also spin up a temporary instance of Windows using the built in Sandbox.
Re: Sandboxie--I've had good experiences with it. I did buy a license for it a long time ago (because I wanted the extra features). The software had since been abandoned and has now been picked up by a new guy that is using a subscription model rather than perpetual. I'm looking for other options now.
