The ship related names thing was a bit light hearted, but systems like this are useful for all those accounts where security is not important. There are ways to connect passwords with the account, with a little thought.
You are right that there are a lot of companies that want you to register an account, when you purchase (or even before). The result is usually spam, but it can be useful to track your own history, sometimes. But if they are instantly forgotten, well it was probably only important to the companies marketing manager.
Regarding info on line. You did say in your OP that you did not want to get technical. There are reviews/comparisons in online publications that dumb things down for us mere mortals, but do allow us to make a more informed decision; and will give more knowledgeable answers (on the specialist topic of IT security) than you could expect on Mayhem.
As for who will be targeted next, and where the weaknesses in these companies systems are... they won't be advertised and some of the weaknesses won't be exploited until the are discovered. As some of the biggest names in tech have seen recently.