In theory your comment makes sense. But it doesn’t make any difference in practice. They’re still not saying anything later in following calls either. So what does that information get them? Nothing. I just got a no-talking spam call as I type this.
Are they actually going to the trouble of identifying live numbers? I get the impression that they just call every number in the area code.
If they are, they aren’t doing a good job. Because some times I actually answer the phone, and they still won’t talk to me. How many years (literally - this has been going on for what 15-20 years) will it take to “verify” this number? What would that even get anyone?
They need to “verify” numbers of people that actually fall for these scams. Now THAT would be a useful database.