ASE is no longer supported by Yahoo! They hired some college dude to keep the program updated, then he dropped off the face of the earth for a few months only to get fired/quit. Support is now non-existent, and asking about why the hell things have gotten as bas as they are on the forums will only get you banned (been there, done that).

The .exe hadn't been updated in over a year and the only support for filters is that provided by the quickly diminishing community. As far as the error you've been getting, that's why I have always not had automatic updates set in ASE - cause you never know what's going to end up being FUBAR after the update.