And dont forget the cryptic “safety number has changed” message you get in Signal when somebody else repaces their phone. It freaks out my parents every time. Yeah you can prevent that but most people don’t realize in time.
This is a feature. Otherwise MITM attacks would be silently possible -- in layman's terms, when someone replaces their phone, you no longer know who you're talking to; there's no way for Signal to tell the difference between that and someone intercepting your messages. The flip side of the "panic" is that when it doesn't happen, you still know you're talking privately with the same person.. which can't be said for whatsapp, which hides these messages by default.
Perhaps they could improve the phrasing of the message, but they absolutely should not remove it.
WhatsApp has the same kind of info messages, except that it calls them as “security code” and doesn’t force a verification or show a verification button unless you tap to see more info.
Perhaps they could improve the phrasing of the message, but they absolutely should not remove it.