Really not fair!!!! They could have told me, or I could get a warning somehow in Electrum!!! If I knew I wouldn't have turned on this shit!!!!!!!!
Just to expand on what LoyceV has already indicated... it is shown in the "disclaimer" which is on the first window displayed after you select "Wallet with two-factor authentication" (full screenshot):
As it says, you can check the billing preferences once the install is completed (basically, you click the little blue shield in the bottom right corner) And you'll see the charges and also how many "credits" you have left before you next need to prepay:
What the fuck is that for??? I am paying 0.001 bitcoin for 2FA!!!!
The 2FA service is provided by a third-party... TrustedCoin. There are costs associated with providing the service... these charges go towards covering these costs. Note that this money is NOT being collected by Electrum... it is a separate payment to TrustedCoin to pay for the provided service.
How can I turn it off??
You've already prepaid for the next 19 2FA enabled transactions... you might as well keep using it until then as I believe the 2FA charges are non-refundable.
If you no longer want to use the 2FA functionality, You can disable it as follows:
Step 1 - Create new 2FA wallet:
Step 2 - Select "I already have a seed":
Step 3 - Enter your recovery seed (it should show as "2fa"):
Step 4 - You'll be asked if you want to "keep" or "disable" 2fa... select "disable":
This will restore your wallet with two sets of private keys in the wallet file, so you can self-sign the multisig transactions without needing to use the TrustedCoin service (ie. no charge).
Alternatively (and probably the best long term solution) is to simply create a new "standard wallet" and transfer all your coins to the new wallet. 2FA wallets are a special type of "MultiSig" wallet... and can cause issues down the line should you need to sign messages or claim coins from forks etc.