This is basically a boy who cried wolf story.

I was recently on a road trip through Newfoundland in Canada, and as we were driving along. I was driving and I saw a sign that said construction ahead. Followed by a sign warning that the speed limit would soon change to 50 kph. That was closely followed by a sign that said up to $1,500 fine for speeding in a construction area.

I didn't want to get a $1,500 fine so I dutifully slowed down from 100 kph to 50 ... Yes, I was that guy with a string of cars behind me. After about 2 or 3 km with not a single sign of construction, I passed a "construction ends" sign and speed up again.

We changed drivers a few times along the trip and went through several more "construction zones" which didn't have the slightest sign of construction and eventually began to just ignore them like everyone else was doing.

Then sometime after the 30th zone we suddenly came across a bunch of people working on the road and had to brake sharply because we weren't expecting them.

It's the same with things like SSL warning messages, I've lost count of the number of times I've seen SSL warning messages when connecting to wireless networks which have captive portals. I know that it's not because they are trying to man-in-the-middle my banking details, but they are trying to redirect me to their site so I can agree to their terms and conditions.

Accepting that captive portals are a thing that won't go away, Android and Firefox on Linux have a solution where they try to reach out known site over HTTP and if the connection gets redirected then they pop up with a little warning message that says "This network requires a sign in..." and takes the user to the sign in page.

I assume other OS and Browsers have similar features. While I wish captive portals didn't exist, I also accept they are not going away. A little "sign in" pop up is better than training people to click through SSL warnings whenever they connect to an open wireless network.