Who I have the same questioned this topic

I've begun to get a flurry of spam text messages (from 265-019, -060, -061, -062, -063)  I forwarded them to Verizon's Spam report (7726) and responded to Verizon's reply, asking for the sender's number.  In each case, I then received a VZW MSG that "It is likely your message came from a short code.  Please return to the original message and reply STOP."

Is this really the right way to handle this?  I've always thought it was exactly the wrong thing to do to respond to a spam text, call or email, since that just confirms to the spammer that they hit a "live" number.