Comment by matsemann

I once tried to apply a hotfix in prod by opening the PHP file through ftp and modify it inline and just save. What I was fixing was the email sending logic. Since it was a long time since I had written any PHP, I forgot to add a $ before my i-variable in the loop. It still ran, though, just getting stuck with index=0 and sending email after email. Luckily my user was the first one in the db so no one else was affected.

But since PHP running on a managed host isn't something one can easily "shut off" it ran until it timed out, sending thousands of email to my gmail. While Google could handle it, it ended up locking my account for a few days with an error every time I tried opening the inbox.

Luckily my domain / provider didn't get blocked or spam-listed in the future.