You are right. This is the least I can do.

Thanks for the words of encouragement.

☹️

I hate that you are right. I really wanted to do something to make a difference, but it’s saddening to see no one batting an eye to this.

Even if we get people to shift to privacy respecting or encrypted apps, the problem still stands. They could just ask you to give access to those services. If you don’t, it would come with its own legal challenges.

Section 247(1)(ii)–(iii) mandates individuals and businesses to disclose passwords or encryption keys and permits officers to “override the access control” of any device or account. If you don’t hand over your phone passcode or email password on demand, officials can hack into the device. Any refusal is now explicitly punishable as non-compliance.

End-to-end encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp or Signal could be forced open during a tax raid.

Solving the issue would need to come from challenging the act itself.

I’ve been using your application for my services for almost a month now, though I just have one redirect link at the moment. I just forgot about it after the setup, although you could consider it to be a sign of a good product?

I wish if there could be additional analytics or logs for the links like a timeline, unique + existing visitors etc, however I completely understand if they cannot be implemented for the sake of keeping the app simple. Thanks for your service regardless!

I wasn’t able to get a clear response but I can say that they are primarily going to use it for writing and storing code like a Github repo, plus installation of 2-3 programs whose names I couldn’t recognise.

They could use Github itself, but I know they know this too so but deliberate chose to work this way. I could probably suggest a software like Gitea or Forgejo for this purpose, but I suppose they aren’t in need of that.

Part of the reason why they left so many details vague was to give me some freedom on what to setup in the server based on what I think is right, although I do agree there needs to be clarification for some points.

Could you give me a hint on what I should additionally ask regarding their server needs?

The server should be no problem to the university as long as it’s set up to do what I was told it would do.

Is it okay to use macOS too? I thought Linux was more prevalent among servers. Although if there is no significant change in operating one compared to Linux, then I’ll just stick to macOS after all.