Transparent Proxy?

Hey,

I was first alerted to the fact something what strange when I was on a website that informed me that the IP address I apparently was using looked like an automated system and the website required a CAPTCHA to be entered. The IP it claimed I was using is: 62.24.251.240, this flagged as a warning to me as I know the IPs I am normally assigned are not in that range.

Upon visting whatismyip.com I am told my IP address is: 92.xxx.xxx.xxx, clearly nothing like the IP above.

See two traceroutes, one to google and the other to the website which is requiring a CAPTCHA to prove I'm human:

1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms efw.home.net [192.168.2.15]
2 94 ms 98 ms 99 ms router01.dsl.home.net [192.168.1.254]
3 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms host-92-10-192-1.as43234.net [92.10.192.1]
4 38 ms 37 ms 37 ms 92.31.253.46
5 46 ms 45 ms 46 ms host-78-144-2-18.as13285.net [78.144.2.18]
6 46 ms 46 ms 46 ms 62.24.251.29
7 46 ms 46 ms 44 ms 62.24.251.41
8 53 ms 52 ms 53 ms xe-9-1-0-rt001.the.as13285.net [62.24.240.163]
9 53 ms 54 ms 54 ms xe-10-2-0-scr001.sov.as13285.net [78.144.1.128]
.. this continues to the website which claims I'm visiting from 62.24.251.240
All IPs addressed in the traceroute above as either local or belong to Opal Telecom, so it is clearly still within their internal network. Note the additional hops that are within the range of the IP address that appears to be acting as a proxy to this website.

And now for the traceroute to google:

Tracing route to google.com [74.125.230.112]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms efw.home.net [192.168.2.15]
2 95 ms 99 ms 99 ms router01.dsl.home.net [192.168.1.254]
3 36 ms 37 ms 36 ms host-92-10-192-1.as43234.net [92.10.192.1]
4 37 ms 39 ms 37 ms 92.31.253.14
5 38 ms 37 ms 37 ms xe-11-2-0-scr001.log.as13285.net [78.144.2.3]
6 38 ms 38 ms 81 ms host-78-144-0-186.as13285.net [78.144.0.186]
7 38 ms 38 ms 37 ms 72.14.219.42
8 39 ms 39 ms 38 ms 209.85.255.78
.. continues to complete the trace..

What the hell is going off? Why is some of my internet traffic being selected to be placed through a transparent proxy without my permission or even being informed?

Hope someone can shed some light on this.

Thanks!

could be this?

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/talktalk/f/3881583-...

Is there some way to opt out of this? If not, I'm out of my contract so I'll just terminate it as implementing a system like that without even informing users and on a opt-in basis is completely unacceptable in my opinion.

In reply to a post by Lemzip:

could be this?

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/talktalk/f/3881583-...

It's probably not directly related to the stalkstalk thing. A quick google threw up http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/aol/3577251-just-a-... for example. Transparent proxies/caches have been in use by various ISPs for years - I remember when Freeserve introduced theirs.