I never knew about the boil auto-shut-off mechanism and the overheat/"boil-dry" protection circuit being two different things in some kettles. In those, pouring out the entire water before the auto-off had a chance to kick in can cause a situation where the kettle stays on (due to not enough steam being present to trip it), but the boil-dry protection circuit continuously engages and disengages until somebody notices or the thing self-destroys – ours did the latter.
Now we have one with a switch at the bottom, and I'm hoping that due to that construction, the boil-dry protection will also disengage the switch if needed. (It also helps that the switch automatically disengages when lifting the kettle off its base.)