Comment by userbinator
4 years ago
Once during a system upgrade we ran some scripts and they triggered emails to about 8,000 people before we realized it (would’ve been 150k people otherwise). The next day was all about clean up, sending an apology email etc.
On the bright side, if you can accidentally send an automated email to that many people, then sending another email to them to apologise is unlikely to be a manual effort either.
When you've interrupted the process partway through as they did, figuring out which part of the list you need to apologize to may well be significantly more effort.
Just restart the script and send it to all 150k people, then just send the apology to the whole list.
Found the DevOps
This is why at my startup we have a “sent_emails” table with the to and from addresses, email type and a template id (if applicable.) Saved a lot of headaches
Yup and we have deduplication logic anyway from day one.
It was easy for us to figure out the 8,000 since we log every message.
Additionally, you have some sort of paper trail you can use in GDPR or T&C disputes.