Why does the notifications still be pushed after the SNS topic had been deleted?

Question

Hi All,
My application use SNS to send the error message base on email subscription.

For now the application had been stop, but the error message still push to my email...

And I already unsubscripte, even delete the SNS topic, but nothing help... the notification emails are still sented to me.....crazy..

The image belowed come from CloudTrail Event history:
![Enter image description here](/media/postImages/original/IMeLkjO0DqR3iEyMajCcWHsA)

Does anyone know what happend ?

### Update:

![Enter image description here](/media/postImages/original/IM9D0Xh2PGQvahw3Ueyz4qXw)

![Enter image description here](/media/postImages/original/IMGU0iMDbRTKmWrcmTngkK2A)

CloudTrail Data Log:
```json
{
    "Records": [
        {
            "eventVersion": "1.09",
            "userIdentity": {
                "type": "AWSService",
                "invokedBy": "cloudwatch.amazonaws.com"
            },
            "eventTime": "2024-03-30T03:52:14Z",
            "eventSource": "sns.amazonaws.com",
            "eventName": "Publish",
            "awsRegion": "us-west-2",
            "sourceIPAddress": "cloudwatch.amazonaws.com",
            "userAgent": "cloudwatch.amazonaws.com",
            "errorCode": "NotFoundException",
            "errorMessage": "Topic does not exist",
            "requestParameters": {
                "topicArn": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:{my aws account id}:systemErrorNotify",
                "message": "HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS",
                "subject": "HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS",
                "messageStructure": "json"
            },
            "responseElements": null,
            "requestID": "00730c8f-782d-5286-ac57-520ef6837e2a",
            "eventID": "5514c463-dfe0-44a9-93dc-fd4562939112",
            "readOnly": false,
            "resources": [
                {
                    "accountId": "{my aws account id}",
                    "type": "AWS::SNS::Topic",
                    "ARN": "arn:aws:sns:us-west-2:{my aws account id}:systemErrorNotify"
                }
            ],
            "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
            "managementEvent": false,
            "recipientAccountId": "{my aws account id}",
            "sharedEventID": "13e9f7df-c295-4615-9caa-d26300726129",
            "eventCategory": "Data"
        }
    ]
}
```

This log mean:

For test reason that my application want to call the sns api for send the message after i had deleted the SNS topic, this log is expected.
But this deleted SNS topic is still sending the notifications to my email........e...

Answer

Hello.

Is it possible that the SNS topic has not been deleted completely?  
For example, is it possible that you are deleting the wrong SNS topic or viewing the wrong region?  
I thought that if the SNS topic was deleted, I would not be able to send messages.  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/sns-delete-subscription-topic.html  
> If a subscriber attempts to publish a message to the deleted topic, the publisher will receive an error message indicating that the topic doesn't exist. Similarly, any attempt to subscribe to the deleted topic will also result in an error message.

You might be able to see something by enabling a trail in CloudTrail and logging data events.  
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sns/latest/dg/sns-logging-using-cloudtrail.html

Answer

Could AWS Config be involved somewhere? So when you delete the SNS Topic, its absence is recognised by AWS Config, and a remediation action is triggered which causes the topic to be recreated?

Or something could be recreating the topic from outside AWS, e.g. Terraform ?

Verify the topic really is deleted with `aws sns list-topics` and also check other regions https://awscli.amazonaws.com/v2/documentation/api/latest/reference/sns/list-topics.html

Answer

I wandor that the SNS is based on message queue ?

Otherwise you can't explain the phenomenon....

Why does the notifications still be pushed after the SNS topic had been deleted?

Update:

Relevant content