User switching causes prompt to authenticate to read SMART data

[ALinuxUser]

What happens: I log in with one user (without admin credentials); I switch to another user (that does have admin credentials); I then get asked to authenticate so that the SMART details of my disk can be enabled. That SMART monitoring was enabled already - and disabling it does not stop the prompt. Strange - and a bit of a pain!

Linux Mint 17.3 x64 Cinnamon 2.8, with a single disk, namely, an Intel SSD (with a home partition, a system partition, and a swap partition).

PS: If necessary I could do more testing to determine that exact range of user-switching actions that cause the problem.