Match Client (Matcli) Software

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Match Client (Matcli) software is a common spyware format used by many vendors. There are two forms of Matcli. The common form is a low impact soft footprint platform. It is designed to reproduce itself within a target platform and replicate throughout a system in order to gather and transmit information about products and purchasing patterns of users. This information allows vendors to more effectively select target audiences for product placement and advertising. The Matcli platform does not provide vendors with personalized or confidential information, and is thus a low security threat on most systems. Matcli bots are also produce minimal impact on system performance, thus making them a low level system performance threat. In general most users will experience no loss of performance due to Matcli bots.

The second form of Matcli platform is rare but finding increasing use, particularly among the financial, debts consolidation , and pornography industries. The salient feature of this Matcli format is the ability to replicate, within an otherwise secure system, short half-life phantom products. Short half-life phantom products imitate a vendor product but are self deleting after a short life on the system. The advantage for a vendor is that the phantom products are often able to make a surreptitious impact on the users, but have vanished before they are otherwise detected. A common example would be a download of a debt consolidation ad that masquerades as a system product. Due to the short half-life the ad will generally self-delete before ever being viewed. But occasionally a viewer will see the ad, but the download will have self-deleted before being otherwise detected. The strategy from a vendor perspective is to create enough of these footprints that a user will eventually be unfluenced to purchase a product. Like the low footprint platform Matcli, this Matcli is a low level security threat, and generally will not compromise the integrity of the system. But the aggressive footprint and replication often results in substantial reduction of system performance.