Unfortunately I can't tell you preciesly.
Once, I did reset the all the users preferences via the console: https://meta.discourse.org/t/reset-default-categories-watching-setting/244930/8 But there was no error message in the dashboard. Otherwise, I didn't do anything of importance.
For updates, I think the error message appeared not before 3.4.3 or 3.4.4…
Sorry for the vagueness.