The Internet, that worldwide maze that enables people to secure goodies, find out everything about anything, and be among the more than 600 million using e-mail can, at the same time, turn like the stroke of a rapier and create the worst kind of havoc.

To settle a few myths, the Internet was not invented in 1969, at or by the Pentagon and certainly not by Al Gore. The Internet evolved from research in many directions through the 60s. Among many others, Bill Gates began his ultimate fortune through the period, and progress was made by research and development at MIT and other technology institutions. Spreading technology at the time were early computers from Apple, Commodore and Radio Shack. Only Apple has survived on the market today.

Ray Tomlinson is generally credited to have “invented” the Internet in 1972. And initial communications were called “hacks.” Strange, isn’t it that today’s miscreants, those bent on using the Internet’s vastness for illegal or harmful purposes are called “hackers?”

Once instant communication and dispersal of information became reality through Internet service providers the computer world geared up in a hurry! Those who paid high prices for those first computers soon learned that expanding technology left them behind before the thing was paid for!

Early word processing programs paled in comparison with today’s more broad and efficient packages. I can remember the numbing difficulty of trying to paginate a 14-page manuscript! Sold the thing too, but editing time dimmed ultimate profit.

Expansion of the Internet brought forth a host of new publications, computer add-ons and hundreds of online retail outlets pitching everything from nails to niblicks. Yahoo Internet Life enjoyed several years of published popularity simply purveying up-to-date Web page information and listing hundreds of them in each issue. I recently looked over a list of Web pages from the March, 1997, issue and found that more than 80 percent are still active and serving today!

Spread of the unsupervised and unregulated Internet also gave the criminal element fertile ground for all sorts of nefarious activity. In fact, it was here that identity theft picked up steam. So much of e-mail is so unknown and ambiguous that those hiding behind any sort of alias can do a brutal job if acquiring personal or private information, credit cards, debit cards or bank information being prime targets.

I know, because it happened to me.

Back somewhere in the mid-80s, I got an urgent e-mail message that someone, or some thing had corrupted my Internet service provider account. Since it was a new account, I thought the request was legitimate so I gave them the information. Right off, after a period of unease, I did some checking and realized I’d made a mistake! I called the hotline number of the credit card, and they cancelled my account and said they’d issue a replacement card.

But the damage had been done.

Whoever it was never charged anything to my former credit card but within the next few days, I started getting multiple e-mails from sources I didn’t know, condemning me for their receipt of obscene e-mails under my email address!

Evidently, the person who filched my credit card took his or her revenge on me in that manner. One by one and as long as it took I sent an e-mail to those people explaining what happened. Some thanked me for contacting them; others did not. But at least, I’d tried.

I was brought up to believe that you can’t be honest with others until you’re honest with yourself.

In any event, this identity theft thing of today is big stuff and those so inclined will use all kinds of tricks within the Internet to serve their purpose.

Through the just-past Christmas shopping period, several major retailers had their name, as well as appropriate commercial logo, used in an order verification scam. Others, using copied bank trade marks or logos, follow the old pattern of needing account imformation to “clear up” a problem. The best one yet though is that you, the email addressee, can share in a $14 million estate, if you’ll only send a personal check, for a few thousand to an address in a third world country!

Beware friends. It’s out there.

I know.