Signing up for a subscription to a streaming service or newspaper has never been easier. Canceling it, on the other hand, can be a cumbersome journey involving phone calls, letters or finding the option to cancel buried in a remote menu on an app. And that’s if you remember to cancel in the first place.
Now, thanks to a new rule passed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, you may have an easier time getting rid of subscriptions you no longer want.
The rule aims to make canceling a subscription as easy as setting one up. The Federal Trade Commission refers to it as “click-to-cancel” under the logic that one click should be able to cancel a subscription. It will go into effect on April 14, 2025.
The move updates a 1973 regulation called the “ Negative Option Rule ,” which governed subscription services for products like magazines or book-of-the-month clubs — physical items sent over and over. The phrase “negative option” refers to the fact that a subscriber, under the rules of the service, doesn’t need to do anything to remain subscribed; if a customer fails to cancel a subscription, a company can charge customers for another year. Silence is acceptance.
The 1973 rule only regulated “ prenotification ” subscriptions, in which a service would send subscribers a product and, if no action were taken, the customer was responsible for paying for it – a model that Columbia Records used for its Columbia House Record Club , which would periodically send music t.