OK I’ll bite–
When I clicked it, it asked “Are you sure…”
Well, yeah I was sure-- until you asked. LOL Makes it sound like I should have second thoughts!
So what exactly happens after a user says Yes?
How does it work for high posters?
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Why don’t you try? 
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I guess an “If you have a lot of posts it may take a while” could be explicit rather than implied.
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I feel the OP’s concern may have come from something like: “Thousands of entries? Am I going to make a rack on your setup burst into a ball of flames if I hit OK? Are you warning me about that?”
LOL, yep, exactly! Are you sure? sent a shiver up my spine, imagining my PC slowing to a crawl (or worse) and my Internet Provider calling to threaten me with a charge of “over-downloading bytes”.
It would be nice if users could select a range of dates or by month, like my online bank uses to pull up statements. But as it stands, after a year of posting, I’m like “Be afraid…be very afraid”. LOL!
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Can we disable this functionality? i.e. prevent users from downloading their post history?
Actually, 4 + years of posts was no issue, even with my old laptop. Done in 2-twitches of a rabbit’s whiskers! I say leave it… but educate users more. For example, make a badge for a new user to download their posts after 1 month of posting in a forum.
I don’t see a point as admin to let them download a copy of the posts to be honest.
It is only their posts.
Our old Forum was run by a company, which decided to close the Forum. Posters had stories, photos they’d taken, and other types of content they wanted to keep. So we all DL’d our own posts.
We haven’t quite figured out what we all can DO with the file… LOL… but if we ever find out, we’ve each got our posts.
You could hide the button with CSS
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Thanks for the suggestion. I’m not that familiar with css. My guess is that I need to lookup the name of the element and edit custom CSS with use display: none for that element?
Yes, that… I would recommend you make a theme component. That said, if users really wanted to download the route would still be there. Also, they could just browse the site and take screenshots, so there is that.
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Please check your local data portability regulations (GDPR, etc) before disabling this feature. (If you conclude you’re fine without it, go ahead!)
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Just to revisit this… the reason is a User’s posts belong to the poster/user. If a member / user wants to save their own posts, for any reason, the link to do that needs to be accessible to them.
BTW. the download process takes seconds. Again it is only that user’s posts, not everyone’s.
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