Because it’s always worth emphasising. Seriously - People that want “100% safe” don’t understand that freedom for all and safety for all are mutually exclusive: and there lies a lot of political/philosophical discussion around the meaning of freedom, security, free will, authoritarianism and so forth. I’d not want that conversation here since it becomes a personal belief thing quite quickly and that just leads to name calling.
Anyway, the Charon killmail that @J_Poll posted (and he speaks a lot of good sense in these forums - we may differ in detail, but that’s opinions for you) has one important lesson in it: The cargo being carried had a listed value of 1.3bn ISK. The generally accepted safe limit for a Freighter is 1bn in cargo.
There is a probability for each item to drop and this gives the ganker (mugger) the chance to recover their losses. The calculation is “does the likely cargo drop/loot cover the cost of the ships I will loose killing this whale?” and in general for a tanked freighter that simplifies as “is it carrying more than 1bn ISK?”. You will find that at most of the trade hubs that any freighter leaving will be scanned and the cargo valued. That information will be passed on to the pirate gang they are working for in a nearby system (for example on the Amarr/Jita route: “The Pipe”) who will then know who to target.
The different freighters have differing characteristics, you are not limited to which you fly - and once you can fly one, flying the others is a very short training step. To copy from the Eve University page:
- Providence (Amarr) - Good all around freighter; second most agile, second most EHP and joint lowest cargo with the Fenrir
- Charon (Caldari) - Largest cargo capacity, but slowest and least agile
- Obelisk (Gallente) - Highest EHP of the group. Second highest cargo capacity. Third most agile
- Fenrir (Minmatar) - Joint lowest cargo capacity and least EHP, but the fastest and most agile
There’s a reason you see a lot of Obelisks (and it’s not for aesthetic reasons).