Draft:T35 Hosting
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Submission declined on 11 May 2026 by BlueStaticHorse (talk). This draft appears to contain text generated by a large language model (such as ChatGPT). You cannot use LLMs to generate article content.
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This draft appears to contain text generated by a large language model (such as ChatGPT). You cannot use LLMs to generate article content.
Declined by Samoht27 2 months ago.LLM-generated pages with certain obvious signs of being machine generated may be deleted without notice. These tools are prone to specific issues that violate our policies:
Instead, only summarize in your own words a range of independent, reliable, published sources that discuss the subject. See the advice page on large language models for more information. | |
 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. (May 2026) |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Web hosting |
| Founder | Alex Melen |
| Website | www |
T35 Hosting is an early US web hosting company. It offered free, advertising-supported web hosting from 1997 to 2012 and currently operates as a paid hosting provider.
History
[edit]T35 Hosting was launched in 1997 by Alex Melen in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and incorporated in 1999.[1] The service offered free hosting with unlimited storage and bandwidth, funded by display advertising. The name was derived from a "Top 35" sites list that had been the original use of the t35.com domain.
By 2007 the service had approximately 400,000 users.[2] The user base grew to over 600,000 by 2009. Free hosting was discontinued in 2012 due to rising rates of platform abuse.[3] The company subsequently transitioned to paid services and operates as part of Melen LLC.
Notable events
[edit]EFF subdomain patent challenge (2008–2009)
[edit]In 2008 the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a reexamination request with the USPTO against U.S. Patent No. 6,687,746, which claimed ownership of virtual internet subdomains. The patent had been issued to Ideaflood, an intellectual property holding company that later reassigned the patent to Hoshiko LLC. Ideaflood had used the patent to threaten several companies including LiveJournal, Freehomepage.com, and T35 Hosting, and had also filed infringement lawsuits against Google and About.com. The Google suit was dismissed shortly after filing; the About.com suit settled after the defendants moved for summary judgment.[4]
The patent was on the EFF Patent Busting Project's "Ten Most Wanted" list. In January 2009 the USPTO rejected all twenty claims of the patent as obvious.[5] The patent was revoked later that year.[6]
NETTICK botnet prosecution (2006–2010)
[edit]In 2006, Thomas James Frederick Smith and David Anthony Edwards developed a botnet known as NETTICK and offered access to it for sale. To demonstrate the botnet to a prospective buyer, they directed denial-of-service attacks against T35 Hosting and the web hosting provider ThePlanet.com. They also breached T35's user database and publicly posted user credentials.[7][8]
The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. Both defendants pleaded guilty in 2010 and were sentenced to terms including federal supervised release and restitution to the affected parties.[9][10]
2010 Austin attack
[edit]The attacker in the 2010 Austin suicide attack, Joseph Stack, published a manifesto on a website hosted by T35 before flying a small aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. T35 removed the website the same day. News coverage at the time examined whether the takedown had been requested by the FBI.[11][12][13]
Other security incidents
[edit]In 2010, M86 Security Labs identified a cross-site scripting vulnerability in McAfee's Secure Short URL service using a T35-hosted demonstration page.[14] A separate phishing operation targeting users of the Habbo virtual community made use of T35-hosted pages.[15]
Recognition
[edit]In 2001 YoungBiz magazine included T35 at #19 in the E-Commerce division of its annual list of the top 100 business owners in the United States aged 19 or under.[16] Founder Alex Melen was included in BusinessWeek's 2006 list of the Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25.[17] T35 Hosting was listed in Bloomberg's "101 Best Web Freebies" in 2009[18] and was included in a 2007 Mashable roundup of web hosting resources.[19]
References
[edit]- ^ "The Best Entrepreneurs Under 25". BusinessWeek. 2006. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016.
- ^ "The Best Entrepreneurs Class of '06 Today". BusinessWeek. 2007. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016.
- ^ "T35 Free Hosting 1997–2012". T35 Hosting. 2016-01-19.
- ^ "U.S. Patent Office Rejects All Twenty Claims of Subdomain Patent". Electronic Frontier Foundation. 2009.
- ^ "Patent office rejects subdomain patent claims". CNET.
- ^ "EFF Busts Bogus Internet Subdomain Patent". Electronic Frontier Foundation. 2009-06-16.
- ^ Wilonsky, Robert (2010-06-10). "They Tried to Sell Their Attack Bots. They Offered Buyers a Taste. Now, It's Off to Prison". Dallas Observer.
- ^ Chawki, Mohamed; Darwish, Ashraf; Khan, Mohammad Ayoub; Tyagi, Sapna (2015). Cybercrime, Digital Forensics and Jurisdiction. Studies in Computational Intelligence. Springer International Publishing. p. 28. ISBN 9783319151496.
- ^ "Thomas James Frederick Smith and David Anthony Edwards Guilty Pleas Press Release". United States Department of Justice.
- ^ "Another Pleads Guilty in Botnet Hacking Conspiracy". Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2010-06-10.
- ^ "FBI Request to Remove Stack's Site: Did They or Didn't They?". Adweek.
- ^ "Plane Crash Suspect's Diatribe". The Smoking Gun. 2010-07-16.
- ^ "Extremists in 'Patriot' Movement Calling Joe Stack a Hero". ABC News. 2010-09-07.
- ^ "McAfee's Secure Short URL Service not so secure". Help Net Security. 2010-12-06.
- ^ "Hackers get hooks into Habbo". IT Pro.
- ^ Mayeux, Patty (2001). "Announcing America's Top 100 'Treps". YoungBiz.
- ^ "The Winners: Best Entrepreneurs Under 25". Bloomberg.com. 2006-11-16.
- ^ "101 Best Web Freebies". Bloomberg. 2009. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016.
- ^ Herber, Patric (2007-09-13). "Web Hosting Toolbox: 130+ Resources for Your Web Hosting Needs". Mashable.
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