My email is firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Both my first and last names are not super common, but off-late I'm seeing multiple people with the same combination when I google my name. I get bank statements from 3 different banks, job offers and even the occasional nude selfie - all intended for someone else. I have tried to reply, click on unsubscribe links - but nothing seems to work. It stops for a few days and it starts again.

I'm somewhere in-between your experience and the parent's. I've had 2-3 instances where it appears that someone put my email address on their account by accident, and I got their auto insurance claims, etc. There was no "click here to verify this is your address" email sent for those.

I also got a lot of email for a high school reunion where the school was named after someone who shares my name... And people routinely left off the numbers in the email address, ending up with mine.

The rest of the not-mine emails all look like phishing attempts to me, and not just mistakes made by some office worker.

I have firstname + two letters @gmail which rarely gets wrong email but then back from the nineties got firstnamelastname @ Hotmail.com which properly get at least one misdirected mail a month.