As I said I've got the same problems. I should have mentioned I was using my own script. It was a very simple adjustment to activate an SSL option as you've shown and I came here looking to see if anyone else had had SSL socket problems. I've tried different SSL-enabled POPs with the same results.
The mIRC -e socket is buggy. Eventually mIRC will crash but even if it doesn't data in memory becomes corrupted and weird behaviour will be exhibited. The error is with the handling of ssleay32.dll according to the crash info.
Definite bug. Some kind of memory handling problem by the looks of the some the weird stuff going on but that's pure speculation.
