If the message is from a real person, I'll reply "hey, you got the wrong guy" (I've been on work email chains, gotten party invites, etc). But sometimes the comes from an automated source that I don't know how to reply but seems pretty important (e.g., purchase receipts, bank summary statements, insurance benefits info).
Obviously, this wouldn't be a problem if organizations did email proper email verification before sending important messages, but they are not. I'd like to stop this annoying pseudo-spam for me, and I'm sure other people would like to get their important missing messages.
A few things that I've tried:
A few times, these mis-delivered messages have provided me a postal address, so I've been able to send an actual letter saying "FYI, you or your bank is using the wrong email. You should probably try to fix that".
Other times, I've tried sending a reply to support addresses, but that usually ends up in a kafka-esque nightmare of explaining that the account for userid "name@gmail.com" should not use the email "name@gmail.com".
So... what's the neighborly good-citizen approach to fixing this?
If it's a business email I'll unsubscribe. Doesn't seem to be much I can do about it, it's multiple people who do this so I want to ask them what they think their email address is.