Part of your online identity, for a start.

Have you registered a domain in your own name? If not, have you checked whether someone else has? And if they have, do you know what they’re doing with your name?

Naked Conversations author and FastCompany TV presenter Shel Israel knows what’s happened to his name which someone else snapped up to register as a domain.

Now ShelIsrael.com is up there as a parody site. Uncomfortable though that site may be for Shel, it could have been a lot worse.

Do yourself a favour – check your name online. If a top-level domain is available – that includes .com, .net, .org, .eu, .co.uk, etc – go ahead and grab it.

Even if you do nothing with it, the fact that you have registered it legally prevents anyone else from doing so.

You can use the WhoIs search feature. Or a domain name registrar such as GoDaddy, the company I use.

But do it now, before someone else does who may have intent other than just parody.