couple of times when Avast Home ed. caught a downloading trojan (if there is a log file with what it was - the software doesn’t make it easy to find it, so I do not know what kind of trojan it was, but it does not matter here), it said “Press the button to stop download”.
Which to me in plain English means “If you choose to press that button (and God only knows how long it takes before the trojan completes the download), we’ll stop that download. You, however, have an option of not pressing that button. And, BTW, the download may be completed in the next…millisecond, so, sorry - you may have been already late. But we will not stop it without you pressing that button. Oh…don’t panic. Take your time.”
If this is not what it means - or does - it should be rephrased. If it IS what it means AND does - it is wrong, and the protection is as good as no protection at all.
The web shield monitors all http port 80 traffic (browsing and downloads, etc.) and if it finds an infection in the download it will alert, and the only acknowledgement you have is to Abort the connection, this drops the infected download so it doesn’t get on to your system.
Whilst you are pondering your decision the download is effectively stopped so it doesn’t keep downloading awaiting your decision. There are however some exceptions to this as some download managers and some browsers may still attempt to complete the download. This may well trigger another slightly different alert by the Standard shield or File System Shield (avast 4.8 or 5.0). The main thing is that you are also aware in advance of an issue with that download.
If this is the case and it stops the download, it’d be nice to reflect that somehow in that message so people would stop worrying and don’t come here to ask that question (I’m sure I’m not the first ever to ask this).