Spam is an unfortunate fact of life these days. When you look at your phone and see a strange number or email address with an equally strange message attached, that’s normal. But not all strange messages seem spammy: sometimes you receive a message that looks perfectly legitimate, but is clearly not meant for you. A normal message or a typical question, addressed to someone else’s name.

You may be tempted to respond to messages like this. If the other party seems genuinely interested in reaching out to someone, it just feels good to let them know they have the wrong number. Or maybe the sender is an obvious scammer and it seems fun to mess with them. What’s the harm in getting even by wasting a little of their time?

At a basic level, responding to a spam text confirms that your number is active and engaged. The only thing worse than a constant barrage of spam calls and texts is letting those spammers know that they have a live number. Remember, most spam texts and texts are probably not aimed directly at you. You are probably just one more number on a long list of scammers who are coming at you en masse to see who will bite. Once they know your number is legitimate, they will either go after you even harder, or they will sell your number to others who will.

And it can be worse than just exposing yourself to more annoying texts and phone calls. Communicating with a scammer only increases your risk of being scammed or somehow swayed by their tactics. Even if you know what’s going on, there’s the simple risk of accidentally opening one of their malicious links or files; just say your fingers might slip while you’re teasing them, leaving you exposed to the effects of whatever malicious URL the scammer wanted you to tap in the first place. (It probably goes without saying, but for the record: do not open any link or PDF sent to you by a stranger.)