Impostor is a web proxy. A web proxyis a program that
intercepts the traffic between your browser and the web. Why would a web
proxy be useful? Well, for many different reasons, depending on the
situation. Consider, for example, a group of users that only have a slow
connection to the Internet. They might want to use a web cache proxy
in order speed up their browsing experience. This kind of proxy keeps copies
of popular web pages on its local disk; now, whenever some user requests one
of these pages, the proxy sends him the local copy - a process that takes
significantly less time than fetching the page from the Internet. The
result: the Internet appears to be faster than it really is. This makes our
group of users happy.
Web proxies can, of course, do other things. Here are some more examples
of common types of web proxy.
Anonymous Web Proxy: This type of proxy hides the IP address of your
computer from the websites you visit. It is useful when you do not want
to disclose this information to the sites you visit.
Firewall-like Web Proxy: This type of proxy prevents your browser from
visiting certain sites of the proxy administrator's choice. It may be
useful in a corporate environment where employees are discouraged from
surfing the Internet for fun (and are forced to use the proxy).
Content Filtering Web Proxy: This type of proxy looks at the content
of the web pages that are returned to your browser, and may remove
certain types of "bad" content. Among other things, It is
useful to exercise parental control (i.e. to prevent your children from
accessing inappropriate material on the Internet).
