Previously, I could scroll back through multiple pages to see older alerts such as quoted messages or likes. Now it only goes back a week and I can't access older alerts. Something recently changed?
In terms of viewing your alerts at https://www.elitetrader.com/et/account/alerts the setup is as follows: Unviewed alerts don't have an expiration, but previously viewed alerts will remain for 4 days and then they expire and disappear.
The settings haven't changed at all. But maybe when you were gone for two weeks, a lot of alerts that were previously viewable became expired. I'm just guessing on that though.
Something definitely changed. I remember very clearly that 1 or 2 months ago I searched for an older alert and could go back to many months old alerts. Anyway, seems to be a permanent change rather than a glitch.