What is RF scanning?

Depending on how it is used, it can have different applications. However, RF scanning is where one runs a receiver through a series of radio frequencies (RF), and tries to identify a specific frequency.

It can include illegal operations, such as RF scanning wherein a transmitter is used to transmit a scan to interfere with transmitters such as petrol pumps, or scanning to locate cell or wireless telephone transmissions.

Or there can be harmless applications such as simply tuning a radio manually.