[ElongatedMusket]

That's wrong. Every minute spent interacting with a fake lead is a minute lost with a real scam victim.

The answer is to "reply" from a throwaway email account. That keeps your real email off active target lists. No spammer uses unique reply-to emails per recipient, so there's no trace back to your original email address. That requires brains for them to setup.

[dangus]

I guess if you assume that I care about other scam victims and that I don’t value my time.

I doubt the effectiveness of this theory anyway, it sounds like trying to stop street crime by buying up all the drugs.

[hiatus]

It's more akin to keeping a robocall on the line so they can't make another call.

[vincent-manis]

Yes, I do that with phone spam, at least the calls that aren't blocked. I always press the “speak with a human” key, and then keep talking to the person until they hang up on me (they always do). I'm retired, so my time doesn't cost anything, and doing this makes their day's work a little less productive. Seems like a good trade-off to me.