Personally, I think part of what it comes down to is respect for the people in question. "We didn't tell you because statistically you're not likely to do the right thing if anything" shows a lack of respect for people and their ability to determine their perceived best action and follow through with it.
If people really can't be bothered to follow through with what's going on, then they'll offload that responsibility to someone else if it's important enough. We already do that with IT for companies, and Anti-virus for a lot of people at home (as much as I think most those companies focus on the wrong thing)[1]. Adding information to the system allows that market to be more efficient and useful.
1: I would love to live in a world where most the protection was a combination of the OS and application vendors patching their own software, and protection consultant/anti-virus companies that knew what software you ran giving you good information on what you should and should not do on a regular basis of for short periods until something is fixed, etc. I think that's a much more valuable service than "we scan all your incoming and outgoing mail and make your computer so slow and unresponsive you think you need to buy a new one".
If people really can't be bothered to follow through with what's going on, then they'll offload that responsibility to someone else if it's important enough. We already do that with IT for companies, and Anti-virus for a lot of people at home (as much as I think most those companies focus on the wrong thing)[1]. Adding information to the system allows that market to be more efficient and useful.
1: I would love to live in a world where most the protection was a combination of the OS and application vendors patching their own software, and protection consultant/anti-virus companies that knew what software you ran giving you good information on what you should and should not do on a regular basis of for short periods until something is fixed, etc. I think that's a much more valuable service than "we scan all your incoming and outgoing mail and make your computer so slow and unresponsive you think you need to buy a new one".