2014 - Year of the online scam (is there a zodiac symbol yet?)

Not even the end of the 2nd quarter of 2014 and my wife and I have already been the victim of online ID theft 3x. We can thank Target for 2 of those (really, thanks Target, awesome to change all the accounts that auto-debit from our cards). This latest one is quite interesting...

My wife received a letter today that looks like typical junk mail. In fact, had I brought the mail in today it would have gone straight to the trash, unopened. Instead, today, my wife opened the mail and inside is a form letter thanking us for joining an ebook club "ebooklifestyles.com" and that our credit card ending in XXXX will be automatically debited every month for this service. They include instructions to opt out by conveniently calling them directly...

In doing a bit of research online, others have received this same mail, and like us, never recall joining this club. The company is not BBB registered but has several complaints against it for exactly this. BBB rates them an F. Several complaints online say this company does in fact debit your card, and the "opt out" phone number is to an answering machine that never has a live person on it.

I don't really care if this is a phishing scam, and they don't really have my info, or if this is just a clever way to legally say "we told them to opt out" and take cash monthly with my "permission". Right now I'm kind of POd at how easy it is to get CC numbers, full or partial. Seriously folks (er, multinational corporations) there's an entire branch of science, called cryptography. Please look into it. Cancelling our cards every few months is quickly getting old.