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Alberta

Strathcona County RCMP warn of intercepted e-Transfer scams

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2 minute read

Oct.8, 2020

Strathcona County RCMP warn of intercepted e-Transfer scams

Strathcona County, Alta. – E-transfers are commonly used to send money as it is easy and convenient. Fraudsters are coming up with new, more elaborate ways to scam you for your hard-earned money almost daily. One of newest ways being used to scam unsuspecting individuals is through intercepted e-Transfers.

An intercepted e-Transfer occurs when the money you send, or were to receive, gets seized and deposited into a fraudsters account, before you or the intended recipient has a chance to receive it. The intercept is not cause by lack of security with the transfer but with the intended recipient’s email account being hacked.

Once a fraudster has access to the recipient’s email account, they are able to view when an e-transfer has been sent. They then use the deposit link in the email to redirect funds to their fraudulent account by answering the security question, which many people often provide within the message of their E-transfer or by email to the recipient.

To protect yourself against this type of fraud, here are a few tips to consider:

  • Do not provide the answer to the security question in the message box or place the answer of the security question to the intended recipient using email. Call or text the recipient to provide the answer.
  • Select a question and answer that is not easy for a third party to guess and cannot easily be found on social media. If the notification is intercepted, it will be harder for a criminal to answer and steal the funds.
  • Be cautious. Do not open emails or click on links that seem suspicious.
  • Notify your financial institution immediately if you sense anything fraudulent about a transaction.

For more information on scams contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre online at www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca or toll free at 1-888-495-8501. If you believe you may be the victim of fraud or have given personal or financial information unwittingly, contact the Strathcona County RCMP Detachment at 780-467-774.

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Alberta

Temporary Alberta grid limit unlikely to dampen data centre investment, analyst says

Published on

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Cody Ciona

‘Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests’

Billions of investment in new data centres is still expected in Alberta despite the province’s electric system operator placing a temporary limit on new large-load grid connections, said Carson Kearl, lead data centre analyst for Enverus Intelligence Research.

Kearl cited NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s estimate from earlier this year that building a one-gigawatt data centre costs between US$60 billion and US$80 billion.

That implies the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO)’s 1.2 gigawatt temporary limit would still allow for up to C$130 billion of investment.

“It’s got the potential to be extremely impactful to the Alberta power sector and economy,” Kearl said.

Importantly, data centre operators can potentially get around the temporary limit by ‘bringing their own power’ rather than drawing electricity from the existing grid.

In Alberta’s deregulated electricity market – the only one in Canada – large energy consumers like data centres can build the power supply they need by entering project agreements directly with electricity producers.

According to the AESO, there are 30 proposed data centre projects across the province.

The total requested power load for these projects is more than 16 gigawatts, roughly four gigawatts more than Alberta’s demand record in January 2024 during a severe cold snap.

For comparison, Edmonton’s load is around 1.4 gigawatts, the AESO said.

“Alberta has never seen this level and volume of load connection requests,” CEO Aaron Engen said in a statement.

“Because connecting all large loads seeking access would impair grid reliability, we established a limit that preserves system integrity while enabling timely data centre development in Alberta.”

As data centre projects come to the province, so do jobs and other economic benefits.

“You have all of the construction staff associated; electricians, engineers, plumbers, and HVAC people for all the cooling tech that are continuously working on a multi-year time horizon. In the construction phase there’s a lot of spend, and that is just generally good for the ecosystem,” said Kearl.

Investment in local power infrastructure also has long-term job implications for maintenance and upgrades, he said.

“Alberta is a really exciting place when it comes to building data centers,” said Beacon AI CEO Josh Schertzer on a recent ARC Energy Ideas podcast.

“It has really great access to natural gas, it does have some excess grid capacity that can be used in the short term, it’s got a great workforce, and it’s very business-friendly.”

The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.

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Alberta

Alberta Next: Taxation

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A new video from the Alberta Next panel looks at whether Alberta should stop relying on Ottawa to collect our provincial income taxes. Quebec already does it, and Alberta already collects corporate taxes directly. Doing the same for personal income taxes could mean better tax policy, thousands of new jobs, and less federal interference. But it would take time, cost money, and require building new systems from the ground up.

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