Dropbox has always been doing been forcing users to give it admin permissions for non-necessary reasons. I posted about this on the Dropbox forums back in 2009:

Dropbox has always been doing been forcing users to give it admin permissions for non-necessary reasons. I posted about this on the Dropbox forums back in 2009: http://web.archive.org/web/20120127192749/http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=14994 http://web.archive.org/web/20120127192749/http://forums.drop... Seven years later and they're still at it? I doubt this article will make them change. I noted that, curiously, if I denied it admin permissions, Dropbox would still work. I know for fact that it I never granted admin permissions because I did not have my own computer back then, and I was using Dropbox just fine. What really baffles me is why they don't give users a choice of whether to make their system less secure when their product clearly works without those extra permissions.