Orkut, Google’ social networking web site, was hit by a relatively harmless worm. According to a report written by blogger Kee Hinckley on his web site TechnoSocial, the virus infected Orkut’s users through emails.

Some of Google’s social networking web site’s users received an email telling that they had been sent a new scrapbook entry from another Orkut user. The scrapbook entry is a type of message on Orkut. Thus, the targeted users had only to access their profiles to become infected by the virus. They were also added to an Orkut group, “Infectados pelo Virus do Orkut,” as Kee Hinckley wrote on his web site.

The name of the group is in Portuguese and it translates to “infected by the Orkut virus.” Orkut is mostly popular in Brazil and India, rather than in the United States, where it can’t catch up with its tough highly popular rivals Facebook and MySpace.

However, although the worm that attacked Google’s Orkut was relatively harmless, it seems that its creators wanted to demonstrate that this social networking web site’s users are in danger even if they do no click on malicious links. The Orkut worm was also noted by Orkut Plus, a web site that offers security tips for Google’s social networking site, and discussed in Google’s own Orkut help group.

The worm apparently did not try to steal any personal data.