Crime & Punishment

Ok so I'm relatively new to pvp in eve. I was hunting a target in low sec and found him on my scanner and warped to where he was (about 40km out from a station) I tried to warp scramble them and it said that safety prevented me from attacking this target. I turned safety to yellow (previously green) and attacked him. I was quickly blown apart by what i think were sentry guns. I warped away in a pod. Later I was hunting another target in low sec (safety back on green) and used an acceleration gate to get to where he was located. I targeted him and was about to warp scramble him when safety prevented me from attacking him. I warped away for fear of getting blown up again.

Does somebody mind explaining why this happens, what causes safety to do this, and how to prevent further issues like this. It is extremely frustrating hunting someone only to find that you cant attack them or you will get blown up.

Thanks

Youre still free to attack people at stations and gates, you just need to be able to take the damage from the sentries.

In lowsec, you get a Crimewatch yellow card for unlawful violence against player ships and a red card for unlawful violence against pods. (This includes warp scrambling a pod as a precursor to a ransom).

Green safety prevents you doing anything that earns a yellow or red card. Yellow safety prevents you doing anything that earns a red card.

Earning a yellow or red card causes gate/station guns to attack you for as long as you remain on-grid with them (they have perfect tracking and will kill anything smaller than a cruiser fast, and a cruiser will lose most fights against non-AFK opponents when guns are firing on the cruiser). A yellow card also makes violence against you legal. If you earn a red card, you probably do not want to go through a low/highsec gate for 15 minutes (at least, not in any ship you care about), but otherwise in lowsec red and yellow are equivalent.