That’s an interesting statement (and I agree, gankers only get to take ISK from others, because people don’t think), more so for the second part:
they often take it from players that are new and vulnerable other than anyone else
Out of interest, I went and looked at whether that’s the case for Safety., as a group representative of gankers currently.
Looking at their last 1260 ship kills (not including capsules, themselves or other gankers):
Just from the data (and the ISK values are based on zkillboard prices):
- 30% of their kills are characters up to a year old
- 90% of the value of their kills are characters older than a year
- 35% of the value of kills comes from characters more than 10 years in the game
Characters older than 10 years generate 3 times the value of losses for Safety. than characters in their first year.
It doesn’t looks like the second part of that statement stands up to the data (at least for Safety.) and far more often, it’s anyone else other than new players that generate the bulk of possible ISK for Safety. from ganking.