Hello David,
I dont think it is possible, no, if it was ticked by default which is kind of the scenario i referred to as "crafting upgrade pages to disguise their wish for you to trial their advanced product" then yes it would have been possible although certainly not my choice. If it required proactive input from me almost certainly no.
There was some sort of problem with Avast about a week back which roughly coincides with things going astray however where two seperate messages showed an inconsistancy saying I was protected but the other saying I was disconnected.
I dont know retrospectivly if this was during an update or not - to much water since then.
I will do a reinstall as per your suggestion but I do not see any kind of rollback mecahnism can you point us more explicitly?
Andy Seabrook