Purple is the color for fleets be default. You should be careful with that. Limited Engagements have a teal color by default with sets them apart from all other states and standing tags.
Plus, solid white skull on light yellow background without blinking by default only means that the pilot has a below 0 security status. Yellow flashy skull on black background means suspect. Geniously taken static screenshot for illustration.
This should have been an obvious warning for you. Having to set your safety to Red in order to do something in high-sec means you WILL get Concorded…that’s the purpose of having the Red setting.
You are missing the point, which is: I thought the pilot was a suspect because I simply did not appreciate the difference between amber-background-white-skull (low standing) and flashing-amber-skull (suspect). I was terribly confused when I could not engage guns and pushed through in my confusion, not understanding that I would be attacked by CONCORD.
I’m not complaining, it happened and I came here and now understand, so I learned.