Discover sued by Minnesota over consumer deception

In a lawsuit filed on December 6, Minnesota attorney general Lori Swanson said Discover Bank and its affiliated processing company made aggressive and misleading attempts to sign customers up for payment protection services that added to their credit card debt. Of particular note is that the company occasionally did so without the customers' knowledge or consent, and was able to do so because it already had access to their credit card information, according to a report from the New York Times.

Swanson said in a statement that the practice was ironic because it involved services that are supposed to protect consumers from having to deal with fraudulent credit card debt, the report noted.

Discover is another of several major handlers of credit card debt to be sued by a government agency in recent months. Visa, MasterCard and American Express were recently targeted by a Department of Justice suit over the transaction fees they charged to vendors.