I always silently wait out the message all the way to the end until the spam machine is the one that hangs up. I get far fewer spam calls than anyone I know. Not enough data to say for sure if that is why. I also tend not to use my phone number for anything. Could be a bigger factor. But I don't get repeat calls. So that does tip back in favour of my behaviour being part of it.

They aren't on the line yet when you first answer, so by the time they connect and start playing their message, it's easy to be a silent line the rest of the call.

Lately I've been getting mostly Medicare scams, with the occasional "you have been charged lots of money on Amazon" scam.

At first, after getting past the obvious recording, I was getting Indian voices with call-center background noise, who identify themselves with names like "Jeffrey" and "Jonathan".

Now the automated recording goes into a less-obviously-automated bot with an American voice.

This stuff is blatantly organized crime, being done with the connivance of certain phone companies. It's not gonna go away until government action in both the origin countries and targeted countries shuts it down ... or until the targeted countries abandon the legacy phone system entirely.

These exists already lol