Can a nook be used with os7

Question

Can a Nook be used with Apple products?  I don't want network or virus problems.

Answer 1

Android is the most malware-prone, insecure platform there is - but millions of users seem to survive without dropping like flies!
I can't answer Q.1 but as for Q2:
How safe is your smartphone? (Android is the top malware collector)
A major source of malware, apart from sites like Facebook and Hotmail, is the Android Marketplace:
More than 50 applications available via the official Android Marketplace were initially found to contain a virus.
Analysis suggests that the booby-trapped apps may have been downloaded up to 200,000 times. The apps are also known to be available on unofficial Android stores too. Once a booby-trapped application is installed and run, the virus lurking within, known as DroidDream, sends sensitive data, such as a phone's unique ID number, to a remote server. It also checks to see if a phone has already been infected and, if not, uses known exploits to bypass security controls and give its creator access to the handset. This bestows the ability to install any code on a phone or steal any information from it.
Remote removal of the booby-trapped apps may not solve all the security problems they pose. The remote kill switch will not remove any other code that may have been dropped onto the device as a result of the initial infection.
Moreover, more than 99% of Android phones are potentially leaking data that, if stolen, could be used to get the information they store online.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13422308
The data being leaked is typically used to get at web-based services such as Google Calendar.
The open nature of the Android platform was a boon and a danger, and as Facebook have already discovered it is also a very attractive criminal playground.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12633923
Smartphones and social networking sites are likely to become the next big target for cyber criminals, according to a security industry report.
Symantec's annual threat analysis warns that the technologies are increasingly being used to spread malicious code
Users of Facebook, Twitter and Google's mobile operating system, Android, are said to be particularly vulnerable.
In several cases, the security holes were exploited and used to install harmful software on Android handsets - suggesting that criminals now view smartphone hacking as a potentially lucrative area, and Android is still in the firing line:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15600697
Android: it's getting worse: Juniper found a 400% increase in Android malware from 2009 to the summer of 2010.  We have since seen exponential grow in Android malware over the last several months. The Juniper Global Threat Center found that the months of October and November are shaping up to see the fastest growth in Android malware discovery in the history of the platform. The number of malware samples identified in September increased by 28% over the number of the known Android malware samples. October showed a 110% increase in malware sample collection over the previous month and a striking 171% increase from what had been collected up to July 2011.
July 2012: Smartphones running Google's Android software have been hijacked by an illegal botnet, according to a Microsoft researcher.
Botnets are large illegal networks of infected machines - usually desktop or laptop computers - typically used to send out masses of spam email.
Researcher Terry Zink said there was evidence of spam being sent from Yahoo mail servers by Android devices:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18720565
One question Juniper always get when discussing our research is if Apple’s iOS is more or less secure than Android? Maybe, but it’s not necessarily because of the security or lack of vulnerabilities in the platforms themselves. The main reason for the malware epidemic on Android is because of different approaches that Apple and Google take to police their application stores. Android’s open applications store model, which the lacks code signing and an application review process that Apple requires, makes it easy for attackers to distribute their malware. There is still no upfront review process in the official Android Market that offers even the hint of a challenge to malware writers that their investment in coding malware will be for naught.
http://globalthreatcenter.com/?p=2492
At least six different varieties of malware were discovered hidden in applications that were distributed through a Chinese download service.
Several pieces of malware were also found on iPhones, however only devices that had been "jailbroken" to bypass Apple's security were affected.
The company's process of pre-vetting all new applications is believed to have spared its devices from a major attack.
(Apple closed out 2011 with a commanding 52.1 percent share of mobile devices tracked browsing the Web, while Google's Android had just 16.2 percent.)
And most recently this:
Millions of people are using Android apps that can be tricked into revealing personal data, research indicates.
Scientists tested 13,500 Android apps and found almost 8% failed to protect bank account and social media logins.
These apps failed to implement standard scrambling systems, allowing "man-in-the-middle" attacks to reveal data that passes back and forth when devices communicate with websites.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20025973
And this:
Freezing an Android phone can help reveal its confidential contents, German security researchers have found.
The team froze phones for an hour as a way to get around the encryption system that protects the data on a phone by scrambling it.
Google introduced the data scrambling system with the latest version of Android called Ice Cream Sandwich.
The attack allowed the researchers to get at contact lists, browsing histories and photos.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21697704
Update from May 2013:
Malware targeting mobile devices is rapidly growing in both the number of variants found in the wild and in their complexity and sophistication, but the only platform being actively targeted is Google's Android, which researchers now say is resembling Windows on the desktop PC.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/14/mobile-malware-exploding-but-only-for- android
And in early June 2013 a highly toxic trojan began attacking the Android platform:
According to reports:
Obad.a exploits previously unknown Android bugs, uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections to spread to near-by handsets, and allows attackers to issue malicious commands using standard SMS text messages.
By exploiting this vulnerability, malicious applications can enjoy extended Device Administrator privileges without appearing on the list of applications which have such privileges," Unuchek said. "As a result of this, it is impossible to delete the malicious program from the smartphone after it gains extended privileges."
More information here:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/behold-the-worlds-most-sophisticated-and roid-trojan
A recent study on smartphone malware has found that 92 percent of nefarious mobile software is targeted at Google's Android platform, and the amount of attacks are growing:
The latest data released in June 2013 by Juniper Networks reveals that Android malware has grown at a "staggering rate" over the last three years. In 2010, it accounted for just 24 percent of all mobile malware, while as of this March the platform accounts for nearly all of it.
In the last year alone, the total number of malicious apps has grown 614 percent to 276,259. The annual Mobile Threats support also identified more than 500 third-party Android application stores worldwide that are known to host mobile malware.
http://newsroom.juniper.net/press-releases/juniper-networks-finds-mobile-threats -continue-ram-nyse-jnpr-1029552
The far reaching vulnerability, discovered by San Francisco's Bluebox Security, involves "discrepancies in how Android applications are cryptographically verified & installed, allowing for APK code modification without breaking the cryptographic signature."
Android apps (packaged as an "APK") are signed with an encryption key (just like iOS apps) to prevent a malicious party from changing the code. Signed apps are expressly designed to enable the system to detect any tampering or modification.
However, due to the newly discovered Android flaw, a rogue developer can trick the system into thinking that a compromised app is still legitimate, giving it system wide access to do virtually anything.
"A device affected by this exploit could do anything in the realm of computer malice, including become a part of a botnet, eavesdrop with the microphone, export your data to a third party, encrypt your data and hold it hostage, use your device as a stepping stone to another network, attack your connected PC, send premium SMS messages, perform a DDoS attack against a target, or wipe your device," a representative of the company wrote AppleInsider:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/03/security-flaw-opens-all-modern-android -devices-to-zombie-botnet-takeover
The problem (with Android) is: that committee design has failed to make Android a good platform for either users or for developers. By not making any hard choices and giving people what they said they wanted, Google simply abandoned the future to cling tenaciously to the past.
Rather than conceptualizing and engineering really new solutions to historical computing problems as Apple did with iOS, Google has only attempted to wrest control away from iOS via volume shipments and has effectively sent mobile computing back in time into the 1990s, resulting in the same malware, spyware, viruses and usability issues of Windows.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/14/editorial-googles-android-haunted-by-s teve-jobs-warnings-on-app-signing-security
The Department of Homeland Security considers the malware threat from Android so serious that they issued a public warning on July 23, 2013:
http://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-FBI-AndroidThreats.pdf