Recently changed .... wait, these files are not in my Dropbox folder. What is Dropbox doing outside authorized areas?

I contacted the help desk for this problem, they send me the following that eventually solved the problem: 

I've taken a look at your account, and it appears that you have some folders that have been symlinked to your Dropbox. Symbolic links, Junction Points, or "symlinks", occur when folders are added to Dropbox that reference directories outside of the Dropbox folder or inside of the Dropbox folder but in a different folder. Because these symlinks may reference locations where Dropbox may have limited accessibility, they can cause various issues. High CPU usage, poor syncing performance, permissions issues and quota usage disparities are a few of the problems that often come up when symlinks are added to the Dropbox folder.

The problem you described may be related to these symlinks in your Dropbox folder. I'd like you to run the following command to determine if there are any symlinks in your account:

1) Open your Terminal app (Located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal). You can also search for "Terminal" using the magnifying glass at the top of your screen.

2) Copy and paste the following line into the Terminal:

find ~/Dropbox -type l -exec ls -lah {} \;

This should give you a list of symlinks in your Dropbox folder and where they point to. The list the command provides shows you the full file path to every symlink in your account.

We recommend that you remove these symlinks from your Dropbox account. You can do that by following the file paths that are provided when you run the command, and remove the files in your Dropbox folder by dragging them elsewhere on your computer (if you don't want them deleted). After you've removed all of the symlinks you can identify from the Terminal command, please quit Terminal, open it again, and run the command again to ensure that no symlinks remain in your Dropbox folder.

In general, we recommend users move the actual folders into the Dropbox folder and then symlink back to the original locations. Please just keep in mind that we don't generally support the use of symlinks due to the issues that can arise when they are added to Dropbox.

After you remove the symlinks, it can take some time for syncing to get back to normal. I recommend restarting your computer and then checking on the status of Dropbox. Please give the application some time to re-index and begin the sync process again.

Hope this helps others too! 

[This thread is now closed by moderators due to inactivity. If you're experiencing a similar behavior, feel free to start a new discussion in the Ask a Question section here.]