Overload

[marshman]

At the moment (13.51 BST) Mailwasher is trying to download 18500 emails any ideas

[stan_qaz]

Download about 500 and mark them for deletion then process mail. It will take a while to get through the stack but once you have it down to under a thousand you'll not have any more problems.

Either you are getting a lot of spam, haven't looked at the account for some time or you have your e-mail program set to not remove mail from the server.

Hmm, If you haven't been deleting messages when you downloaded them with your mail client changing that setting (usually in the mail program's server settings) would delete all the messages you have already downloaded.

[AlphaCentauri]

Is your question, "Why are there suddenly 18,500 emails to download that weren't there yesterday?"

That wouldn't be a mailwasher problem ... unless you have been bouncing spam and got some innocent recipient of your blowback spam very pissed off at you.

If that person decided to retaliate by visiting all the websites advertised in his spam and telling them not to send spam to your address, you might just have to get a new email address. (Trying to unsubscribe from spam is a guaranteed way of getting you on every spammer's mailing list.)