The fees are collected partially by those who are first to reference your transaction as parent and partially by witnesses.
So, anyone here who got the fees?
In the current version, the wallet does not display who got the fees, and I believe it is of little interest to most users. Besides, the fees paid by one transaction are too small to care about (unless the marketcap is over $100bn).
Is there any way to have more information about a transaction, the id for instance, the number of confirmations it needed (it just goes from unconfirmed to cofirmed)?
The wallet is designed for unsophisticated users (GUI was borrowed from Copay, the most easy to use bitcoin wallet) and we generally avoid displaying information that bears little meaning to regular user.
There is no such thing as number of confirmations, the transaction is either confirmed or pending. This is by design (see the white paper
https://byteball.org/Byteball.pdf).
or
b) require a signed message from the claiming address instead of making a 0.001 BTC transaction
- then people wouldn't have to make a tx that possibly compromises their privacy or loses them coins
This one is complex too. Not every wallet has this function, and even when it has, users rarely know how to use it. There is nothing simpler than just regular payment, which is the basic functionality of every wallet.
Can't we have both? Users who know how to/can/want to sign a message may do so and others may send a payment.
Having both is having complexity again, something I avoid by all means throughout this project.