1: Use a VPN so your ISP can’t tattle on you for downloading things.
2: Virus scan stuff you download before opening/running it.
3: Keep good backups (you should be doing this anyway) so you can restore from backup if some kind of virus/malware manages to evade your virus scan.
Do those three things, and the risk of downloading pirated shit will be incredibly low. (And streaming isn’t zero-risk, either. The streaming apps or the streaming files themselves could theoretically be compromised, after all.)
The risk tends to be hugely overblown.
1: Use a VPN so your ISP can’t tattle on you for downloading things.
2: Virus scan stuff you download before opening/running it.
3: Keep good backups (you should be doing this anyway) so you can restore from backup if some kind of virus/malware manages to evade your virus scan.
Do those three things, and the risk of downloading pirated shit will be incredibly low. (And streaming isn’t zero-risk, either. The streaming apps or the streaming files themselves could theoretically be compromised, after all.)