That's why we have three of them!
I'm at Stanford today attending a workshop on Trustworthy Interfaces for Passwords and Personal Information. We've been looking at lots of examples of how fradulent websites try to steal your passwords, credit card numbers, and other juicy stuff.
George Staikos has just been showing us how the security indicators are inconsistent across various browsers — Safari, Firefox, IE, and Konqueror put the indicators sometimes in the toolbar, sometimes in the status bar, on the left or the right. George compared the regime of security indicators to a broken-down rusty old car. A comment from the audience:
Phillip Hallam-Baker: It's like a car that hasn't been maintained for ten years. The padlock was introduced around 1995 and we're still using it...That set off plenty of laughter around the room.George Staikos: That's why we have three of them now!