Trouble with emptying trash

Question

My Macbook Pro has started doing something odd - when I move an item from the desktop to the trash, I get a dialog box asking for my password, and when I enter it, it moves the item and immediately empties the trash. I used to be able to recover items that I'd moved to the trash, and could manually empty the trash, but I can no longer do this. Is there some setting that I inadvertently changed that is making it do this?

Answer 1

First, never empty the Trash in the shell (Terminal.) It's unnecessary and dangerous.
Back up all data.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership, permissions, and access controls to the default. If you've intentionally set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it, but you do need to follow the instructions below.
Start up in Recovery mode. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select
Utilities ▹ Terminal
from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open. In that window, type this:
res
Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:
resetpassword
Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.
Select your startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select
 ▹ Restart
from the menu bar.