This isn't really anything special, we used to use shortcodes to do a reset on Palm Treos otherwise they wouldn't know to automatically re-activate (and activation was a pain).

Unfortunately "hackers" target the lowest common denominator, if it just so happens that people are stupid and willing to randomly click links (or just hit key commands) without understanding what is going on, they "deserve" (probably the wrong word) what they get.

It's exactly the same as someone saying "if you delete your system32 folder your computer will boot up faster" or "if you issue rm -rf from your unix console it will prevent you from needing to reboot your server".

You can't fix stupid, you can try, but they keep making better stupid people :X

As far as how to prevent this: User education. If you aren't sure what it is, don't touch it.