When people realized anyone with a sophisticated police scanner could listen in on cordless (and then early cellular) phone calls, it forced manufacturers to actually implement a bare-minimum level of security on those devices. I hope this pushes more manufacturers to switch to rolling-code algorithms (like the key fob your car uses), in place of simpler, less secure codes that can be captured and replayed.
Being an elementary aged student poking around, I realized I could use the tuner to listen in to telephone calls somehow. Granted, I lived on a farm and there were probably only two dozen houses within a mile radius of our home; the nearest being a quarter mile away. I had a small rabbit ear antenna on the back of my CRT TV that could have been plugged into the VCR.
I don't recall the actual hardware I had.
I never figured out if I was listening to cordless phones (seems they would not be powerful enough to reach me), cell phone signals (there were few cell phones in my poor rural community I assume but I guess there could have been travelers on a nearby highway), or CB radio signals from truckers on the highway (these seemed like mundane person to person conversations; not trucker conversations). Perhaps it could have been long distance HAM operators though they didn't seem to use any HAM protocols while speaking.