This is overt fraud, but borderline with subscriptions.
FIRST they requested users update payment information as if to continue their FREE accounts. THEN they billed users for a month's service.
It's called a "negative option" when the user has to do something to prevent additional charges. Normally that is illegal per US FTC (but legal in some countries). However, negative option contract terms ARE legal. That's when you agree initially e.g., with NYTimes that when your subscription is up, it automatically rolls over to paid tier X, putting the burden on you to cancel.
If, or since, most of these account agreements are 10+ years old, it's possible they ginned up some evidence of a negative option contract. It's almost certain no user has any information on the original terms of service. So then it's a question of who has the burden of proof, which leads me to wonder if there have been changes to that of late.
I hate to say it, but another option is that this company has been getting pushback or eviction from credit card issuers. This might be their way of imposing costs on them, to have to go through thousands of chargeback cycles, to spite the issuers pending their exit from the platform. It also might be a good way to get some cash from the issuers before declaring bankruptcy. Or, someone inside did this, on a Friday/Saturday, and they'll be gone before Monday with everyone's credit card information. Who knows?
To reiterate what others have reported:
9/17 title "Your Manuscript Account"
- $31.25 for:
- $12.50 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off fogbugz
- $6.25 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off time tracking
- $6.25 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off wiki
- $6.25 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off agile
9/16 title "Your fogbugz free subscription is expiring" (from a different sender)
"To continue using FogBugz, please add payment details to your account today"
(and if you didn't notice)
"Because you're already a valued FogBugz user, we've automatically upgraded your account to include up to five individual users with your new paid subscription"