No I know plenty of how these things work. If someone wants to sit there and sniff the air for unencrypted data fine! Who's gonna do anything with a bunch of phone numbers that are more or less meaningless to them? Other data, I could see being an issue but A.F isn't transmitting your credit info over the air.
As I said before, when you dial out and the cell sends the tower what you are attempting to do there is no encryption there. It's really not much different, just a different frequency. (Which simply requires a different bit of hardware to 'sniff' it)
No, you really don't. This isn't 1995 anymore with AMPS cellular where anyone with $100 to drop on a scanner can listen in on your phone calls. GSM in the USA and Europe are encrypted via A5/1 which is reasonably secure considering it requires expensive equipment and a
3 terabyte rainbow table to even begin the attack... And even then this "attack" is more of a proof of concept than a working hack.
Now, compare this with WiFi either open or WEP encrypted. Any teenager with a laptop, cantenna, and even an early alpha build of Wireshark from 5 years ago can pull plaintext data out of the air without even knowing what they're doing. Business contacts are very important to keep secure and confidential. Having my contacts compromised could put me out of work.
I think maybe you'd have a better time wrapping your head around this if you imagined people using a phone to do more than call Mom and Dad for a ride home from Soccer.
