The problem with vanity addresses is also that people are lazy and would only compare the first few chars.
So it you had the address 1BATMAN2a2hqZdYv7WN7iy5hcGTUoedAnG than someone could create 1BATMAN2amC8jszfAZQ4EzefiDFSRkjpnG and people would think it's the same address.
How can we solve that kind of problem?
You can either
a. change all of mankind and make them compare more than just the first few characters
b. not use a vanity address
I went for the second option.
I don't get how people manage to send bitcoins to the wrong address though..why not just copy-paste the address? If the receiver didn't paste the correct address, it's their fault. So even if two vanity addresses look similar, it should be easy to distinguish between them