I went to check on a Private Message that had a link I wanted to visit , but discovered the PM is no longer in my inbox.

Are Private Messages automatically purged after a certain time period ? I know that we are limited to having only 60 private messages , but wasn't aware that PMs will be automatically deleted after a certain time period . Is this a new policy ? I had not noticed Private Messages being deleted before unless I chose to delete them myself , which I usually did, to make sure I never went over the 60 message limit, but I have certain messages I wanted to save. Now they are gone.

My current PM box says: "You have 6 PM Topics in your account. Member accounts are limited to a total of 60 PM Topics." So I'm nowhere near to the 60 message limit and yet several messages (probably no more than 20) that I had purposely kept in my inbox are now gone.

What is the time limit for who long a Private Message will be retained ? If I move them into the Save Box does it keep them perpetually , as long as I don't go over the 60 message limit ?

Never mind . Duh. It's right there in the FAQ on PM's -

"All unsaved PM Topics will be deleted automatically after 60 days of the date of the last message in the topic (includes Staff messages). It is the member's responsibility to save or print any important information prior to its automatic or untimely deletion."

BUT, whats weird is that 4 of the messages still retained in my PM Inbox or Sentbox are from 2021 , 2022, 2023, and 2024 , well over 60 days old ! So why were many of my more recent PMs than the ones from 2021 , 2022, 2023, and 2024 deleted ?