Oomis, honestly I don’t know about your first statement.
About your second one, again, I’ll just posit that it matters where one finds oneself. In one community it’s just proper to do so, rude not to. In another it’s flirting, an extra word or attention extended to the opposite gender.
If I recall, there’s a woman in the Torah named “Shlomis bas Divri”, I think Chazal say she was accustomed to greeting all (even men) in the street “Shalom alach, Shalom alach”. It didn’t do good for her.