The Line of Death
I think the real issue is that everybody cares about usability but nobody actually cares about the users. Browsers, web apps, etc. try hard to make it easy to browse the web, but they don't try very hard to make it clear exactly what you're doing and what the risks are - in fact, everyone tries rather hard to downplay the risks and to hide how things actually work. How many users understand "the line of death", or the basic fact that different pixels are drawn by different programs, not to mention URL structure, or (gasp) Unicode and how it fits there, or how rnicrosoft.com isn't what they're looking for? What makes them understand this? Nothing. Software vendors are very happy with uninformed users (in fact these are the best users because they don't realize which of your programs and services can be replaced with an alternative and how), and users are very happy to stay uninformed, too.<p>Not saying I know how to fix this, just that in my experience non-tech people are so completely unaware of what's going on that this "line of death" thing is not even a thing for them.