This is one reason I miss one-time credit card numbers. My main credit card used to allow you to generate one-time numbers. You could control the limit on the numbers, how long they would last, you could edit this, and so forth and so on. I loved it because you could give a different unique card number to each site, that would self-destruct after a specified amount of time.

It was great for stuff like this because if they pulled this kind of nonsense, you could just walk away and they were left with a unique card number that didn't matter worth anything. Most of the time, you might only have the number active for a few weeks, so if they tried to charge that number say, a year later, it was obvious they were trying to use a number you had intentionally made limited in time.

This service was discontinued and I really miss it a lot.

I still don't know that I'd go into a contract with any company that behaves this way (newspapers included) but it provided a layer of insurance in case you missed something.