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Magazine subscription leads to unauthorized recurring payment
In 2010, the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act was passed, which prohibited certain activities, most of which had to do with online sites sharing your CC info with third parties.  However, the final part of the act deals with "negative option" marketing, which is basically what you're describing - "We will charge you unless you say no". It requires three components to allow a negative option: If you did not explicitly enroll in automatic payment, and made the initial purchase online (or made your most recent purchase online, I suspect) then it sounds like this was a violation of this act.  On the other hand, the act isn't terribly careful about defining terms, and is really quite vague in a lot of places, so it's possible they would argue they are not using a 'negative option' scheme but instead simply charging your bill similar to how your phone company might use autopay. If it was not online, then this probably doesn't apply.  Instead, the FTC's rule on Negative Option with regard to sale of goods applies.  Title 16 Part 425 covers this; this law is much less limiting as to what the marketer can do.