Backup, backup and backup!!

A word to the wise, always make backups….. Particularly when you are testing a script that has the ability to delete emails!!!!!!!

I was writing a script to delete some of my emails whilst I’m away, regular newsletters, advertising from holiday companies, you know the sort of stuff I’m talking about? Not spam, and not stuff I want to unsubscribe from – just stuff – stuff that I’ll only delete when I get home anyway.

Anyway, I screwed it up and an empty variable got passed into the cleanup script and has blown away my entire inbox. Luckily it’s my more spammy account that I signup to most things with, however I’m quite good at pruning it normally and it had over 700 posts in! GRR!

So a lesson, backup files and mailboxes before you run ANY automated scripts against them!
photo credit: alvy