Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

How to protect myself against unauthorized recurring CC charges?
There is no way to stop any merchant from setting a recurring charge flag on a purchase. According to the following article, Mastercard and Visa encourages merchants to use this feature and even give them a better rate. I have found it impossible to stop these unauthorized transactions.  The article sites that the merchant is allowed to march the charges across expired cards to find a good card that you might have as well as the article states they can cross banks to find you if you have the same type of card. Virtual account numbers will not protect you. Sorry but the only solution I have found is to close the account with the bank and move to a different type of card, mastercard to visa, or vice versa. This will only protect you for one move ,because if you have to do this again. Merchants that you thought were forgotten even years later will find you and post a charge legally. Virtual numbers from Mastercard or Visa won't stop them.   I believe this is the number one reason for credit card fraud for consumers. There is no reason for a merchant to let anyone off the hook when the credit card company will side with them.  The article below does state that Mastercard does have a "stop recurring payment" flag.  Apparently no CSR tht I have talked to knows about it when I have asked to get a problem fixed. I have found that the only way to stop these charges from happening is to close all my visa and mastercard credit cards, pay with a check that you write and mail or a PayPal one time payment that is sent to pay for an invoice.   Recurring Credit-Card Charges May Irk Consumers