Here's what I do in these situations:

1) determine the email pattern for gm employees, usually it is something like [email protected] 2) find the head of every major department related to my issue as well as the CEO and add their addresses to an email 3)provide documentation of all attempts to correct the issue and if you use outlook, request read receipts just to be 'that person', send an email highlighting your multiple attempts to correct this, how you are willing to escalate it to x,,y, or z. Media, government agency, etc. if it is not dealt with appropriately. 4) success

I've received gift cards, emails from CEO's apologizing, finally got removed (after 6 months of emails to regular staff trying to stop it) from an automated Dell email invoicing the wrong company, etc.

Oh brother, I know your pain. I too have a 6 character gmail address because I signed up in 2004 when it was in beta and I too get email for all sorts of people (both accidentally and because people just give out my email address as a fake when they sign up for something stupid).

It can be fun too though, like when someone signs up for a dating site with your email and you can login to what is effectively your account.

I had the same problem as you with a large bank... kept getting emails with someone else's balance in them. I kept responding and trying to get the bank's attention, but nothing. Eventually I tweeted at them publicly with a description of the problem and that got them to clear it up pretty quickly. ;)

WOW! I was also an early adopter of Gmail and have a six-letter gmail address as well that I got all sorts of emails that were from other people (but with the same name as mine). In inspecting the raw email content, the "To:" field is correctly spelled with my gmail address but the email content have been nothing to do with me: someone else's group invite, account registration that was clearly not me, flight confirmation emails, hotel booking confirmation emails, bills, work related emails and etc. You name it.

Is this a widespread issue with Gmail?

Yes. Heaven help you if you have an extremely common firstname.lastname combination where there are multiple spellings of the first name. Once you're in someone's address book, it's nearly impossible to get them to delete you if they're not tech-savvy. So every time someone intends to email [email protected] they send it to John.Smith instead.

There are companies that have been emailing me contracts for years now. I've gotten multiple divorce records, tax returns, all sorts of confidential information. I guess that's what all those legal disclaimers in the footer are for, because someone could do a ton of damage with the information I've gotten.

Those legal disclaimers in the email footers are not binding.

(I am not a lawyer.)

I'm part of some family's mailing list. They seem to go on fun vacations each year.

Some woman has a gmail account that seems to be [first initial][middle initial][last name]@gmail.com, but she wound up on her synagogue's leadership mailing list as [first initial][last name]@gmail.com, which is my email address.

Until somebody finally listened to my responses of "These aren't the droids you're looking for", I was privy to lots of intriguing drama.

yep, I also have a 6 letter gmail address and I get a ton of stuff. It's a nightmare. I have utility bills, at some point I was on a mailing list for some real estate company, I even got people complaining to me about their broken A/C units. Several cable accounts with multiple providers in multiple US states are registered on my account and there is nothing I can do about it because the companies don't give a damn or the support people received the worst training.

Sometimes it's funny because people send me Mails trying to recover their account but I tell them to speak to the companies because I have no way of verification that I'm actually turning over something to the right party, so I don't do it.

widespread enough that there's an xkcd about it:

https://xkcd.com/1279/

I have a 7-letter gmail address. Middle initial (I don't use my first name), last name. Every so often I'll get information mailed to me that's supposed to reach Terry Myname in Illinois, Tim Myname in Iowa, Tammy Myname in Florida, Todd Myname in Wisconsin, etc. A lot of times it's just mundane (oooh, I could cancel someone's Bath & Body Works order!) but on occasion it's legal paperwork.

I do at least try to get the important ones sorted out -- I reply with "it appears you're trying to reach [name] in [city] but you've actually reached [me] in [my city]. If you have a phone number for [name], you should give them a call and ask for their correct e-mail address." On occasion that even works :D

Same here, also on a 6 character gmail address.

I regularly get people applying for loans, who send me A LOT of personal information, because of a typo in a spam mail. Contacting the responsible loan company, who looks pretty fake and shady, didn't lead to any success.

Once had a gentlemen in his 70ies contact me about my profile on a dating site for seniors and get lots of car advertisement addressed to someone with my initials, who sometimes does eBanking, is 40+ years married to a wife whoms father died 3 years ago, etc. etc.

Needless to say, I love mail filters.

Unrelated to OnStar but similar issue here. I have a common name @ gmail from 2004 and get all sorts of information.

A MetLife VP keeps sending me confidential financial stuff. Several other people around the world too, bank stuff, car stuff you name it.

I've stopped trying to "fix" the situations and just mark them as spam and move on.