Today's dirty online tricks winner: Newsweek

I get newsweek. Once it was free, but the following year they charged me and I was too lazy to cancel it. It's coming up on renew time so I was going to not be lazy and make sure I didn't get it again. In the spirit of avoiding any kind of direct contact with people, I opted to do this online.

I moved shortly after I was getting the magazine, so I had already created an account with them to change that information. The email address stored was old, so before canceling I was going to update the address so I could confirm the cancelation, if neccessary. Below the box where I put my new address were three options: Newsweek, Newsweek and affiliates, and Newsweek and third parties. Initially I thought this was who you wanted your address changed with, so, in the interest of minimal spam, I picked Newsweek only. Only after doing this did I read the fine print that said "Choose who you want to receive mail from". Oops! Spam Awareness Alarm! Deselect! Deselect!

Nope, it wasn't a three element checkbox group. They had three one-element groups of radio buttons, so I could select all three, but the only way to unselect was to reload the page and reinput my information, praying IE wasn't going to remember my input in the form and help my by filling it out again (the system didn't work at all in Opera).

Is there an honest reason for making the page that way that's beyond my scope of deduction, or is it just trying to collect as many "voluntary" spam addresses as it can? All in all, I guess it's a minor event in the grand scheme of corporate evils. Still, I'm surprised the radio buttons didn't default to selected on the initial page load. Wtf are these people thinking?

in the address bar. (no space in javascript, of course...)