Abstract: Account transaction protection is provided during the automated authorization process of a charge account, a debit account, a personal account or a business account. After a vendor asks the authorization service provider to approve a pending transaction, the authorization service provider automatically contacts an account holder asking for approval or refusal of the pending transaction. The contact is made by telephone, or computer network, such as the Internet. After entering a PIN to establish identity, the account holder approves or rejects the pending transaction after receiving a validation request message detailing the facts of the transaction. The PIN may be a normal PIN or a duress PIN. If the duress PIN is used, indicating the account holder is under duress to approve the pending transaction, the service provider notifies the authorities. Similarly, if the account holder indicates that refusal is due to unauthorized use, the service provider contacts the authorities.

Abstract: A memory controller includes an address queue with address queue locations that may expand to store address commands that point to consecutive locations in memory. In this manner, multiple address commands may combine together in a common expanded address queue location. In one embodiment, each address queue location includes a main information portion and a supplemental information portion. The supplemental information portion is smaller than the main information portion. The main information portion stores the target address information of a first address command. When the address queue receives an address command with a target address that is consecutive to the target address of the first command, then the supplemental address portion stores a subset of the target address of the second command.