Just venting about people who cannot understand the simplest, most obvious instructions!
I have 10 popular websites, one of which (Grammar and Usage for the Non-Expert) is quite popular (about 5 million readers worldwide).
Many of my readers, especially those of my grammar and usage site, email me, some to say thanks or to praise my site, a few to tell me I am full of caca, many to ask for help with matters of grammar and usage that they still have trouble with.
To contact me, my readers use the “Email Me” button at the bottom of all my pages.
But something very weird has happened in the last 9 or 10 months—something that never happened before last year, even though my sites have been up since 2001.
A lot of my readers—about 30-40 each month—click the “Email Me” button to send messages to themselves or, even more bizarrely, to send messages to friends or co-workers, recommending the article they have clicked the button on.
For example, I will get an email message in which the message says, “compound sentence commas”—and it is obvious that the sender thinks he/she is sending a message to his/her own email account about an article he/she wants to remember.
Or a message will say, “Hey, Dan, this article about capitalizing titles is really clear and helpful.” That clearly is intended to go to a friend or co-worker, not to me.
Now, I think “Email me” or “Contact me” are common buttons on sites where the site owner is willing to receive email messages from readers, so why do so many readers over the past 9 or 10 months suddenly assume that “Email me” means “Send an email to myself” or “Send an email to a friend or co-worker”? How can such a simple message as “Email me” be misunderstood by so many people? Even when they think “Email me” means to send a message to themselves, don’t they realize that such a button would “Email myself”? Besides, why don’t they assume that I am offering them a way to contact me, since so many websites offer just such an option?
I am getting frustrated at having to send so many messages telling people that “Email me” means “Email me, not them or someone else! In fact, I have saved a standard reply so I can just copy-paste it into an email rather than typing it out dozens of times each month.
= new reply since forum marked as read
i have extensive experience on both sides of that divide. 
But, then I started thinking about all those news and magazine websites (and now many others) that have introduced the email option to share the article with others (or send to yourself).
They seem really ubiquitous now... So, while I share your pain, I think I have to soften my attitude a bit.
Why not have a "Contact" button and then the email address or alternately program a form to email you. I think the time it takes you to do so will save a lot of headaches in the long run. 
Not having tested this at all, so it is all just theory.
Since the "Email me" button invokes some sort of email client, it may be possible that there was a change to the software about a year ago, and that maybe people would try to put their own (or a friend's) email addy as a CC and the software somehow rejects this, in a manner that isn't obvious to the person.
reactions from people in whose languages 'email me' is easily mistranslated.
Think of all those languages with reflexive pronouns. Could be. 
