Comment # 3 on bug 1036736 from Luca Beltrame

Posting on behalf of Andre:

Hi,

this is expected behavior and sadly comes from a GnuPG problem. The Popup would
also show up if you did a "gpgsm --with-validation -k" on the command line in
that test environment. Which KMail's account wizard is doing to get a list of
keys that may be offered to configure with the identity. For GnuPG it thinks
that the certificates are new as it sees them for the first time and asks the
user about it. It would also happen if you start Kleopatra for the first time.

Upstream no longer ships default certificates. So maybe a Bug against your
GnuPG Package to include:
https://dev.gnupg.org/rGc19b2061274cd50838e62a2acbdc7e7d24888e7e

This would solve the problem not just for KMail but in general.

Regards,
Andre