I’ve been writing about MLM in one way or another for a few years now and over that time there’s been quite a lot of discussion about why I publish under ‘Oz’.

Critics of my work use it against me as a grounding point to establish a lack of credibility and the inevitable ‘but you just work for (insert rival company’s name here)’.

This is a recurring theme that seems to pop up time and time again despite not showing any bias in the MLM opportunities that I’ve thus far reviewed and continue to offer coverage on.

Getting back to the critics however, one of the particular reasons I publish under Oz is that, like any other industry, there’s a lot of deceptive and malicious people in MLM.

When you start critically analyzing the MLM opportunities they happen to be promoting at any given time, they tend to get nasty and what usually follows are emails like the following one I received.

Oz,

I propose creating a website letting your readers know who exactly you are. The site would include your full name, address, pictures, videos, some of your online habits (torrents, message boards) and a few of your offline activities.

I think that your readers would have a different perspective if they knew that you were a twenty-something year old kid… you may even gain some courtroom experience if your personal information were made public.

Certainly your life would become much more interesting.

Imagine prospective employers googling you only to learn that you’re a bit of a bittorrent  freak, who enjoys spending his free time talking trash about, well, everyone.

I know that there’s a lot of people who would like nothing more than to learn who you are. A lot of very wealthy people with the means and motivation to contact you directly rather than through a court system.

You’ve mentioned a few times that you were too busy for behindmlm.com…. is that still the case? Because if that site came down (completely) then there would be no reason for the new site to go up.

I could care less about ozsoapbox.com, but I do think you may have better things to do than write about MLMs.

The launch date of the new website is Wednesday. Are you ready?

The author of the email is obviously invested in the MLM industry and could come from any of the business opportunities I’ve so far reviewed.

Given my communications outside of BehindMLM itself, I have my sneaking suspicions who sent the email but I digress,

It’s not important who sent it, so much as the fact that it was sent at all.

Somewhere out there is a person involved in the MLM industry who thinks that sending out blackmail emails is acceptable. This person could be yourupline… it could be the CEO of the business you work for, or it might just be a newcomer to the business who started last week.

MLM stretches far and wide in scope and I certainly don’t mean to tar the entire industry with the same brush. Somewhere out there though at least one person thinks this kind of behavior is acceptable and that no doubt reflects on their MLM marketing efforts as a whole.

If they’re willing to subject me to such threats, I can only imagine what they’re willing to do to those whose personal information  they have ready access to via business databases.

Here’s to staying safe, credible business ethics and the continued non-biased coverage of the MLM industry at large…