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They have nothing to do with cheaters and scammers.
Would be best if you had to log-in to those site to allow them to receive that information (and to delete later) but most allow anyone to add in your URL or ID64 into the search and then add that information without your consent.
Actually they must provide a mechanism to request deletion of that data. Just because something was public once doesn't mean it anyone has the right ot perpetually store that information.
That's only for personal information. Steam accounts are not personal information unless you put that on there, which sites like steamid.uk allow you to remove. (But they don't allow full removal of your account.)
https://steamid.uk/privacy/
Sorry for replying to an old post but I wouldn't want to start a new (duplicate) suggestion unnecessarily.
I have the same suggestion as the OP and want to mention the same issue. Several websites like steamid [dot] uk store historic profile information. The keyword is the historic.
1) When we register a new steam account, it is public visibility by default. These 3rd party websites cache it. Without registration, without permission or agreement.
2) There is a GDPR manager on steamid [dot] uk.
a) This tool only allows the users to remove the _personal_ cached information. A real name (real first and last name, as an example) or a personal photo.
b) In order to remove personal information, the websites "threaten" to ask a personal identification card (in certain countries it is called "passport") which should be sent over the Internet. This is semi-legal (grey-zone) but in some cases it is even against the law to ask such information. The last statement (--> it would be against the law) is still under my verification but this week I am going to consult my lawyer to make it sure. This is nothing negative, I just want to be sure what is allowed in my country as the legal systems are very different among countries. These websites may be allowed and may be legal in the countries where they work, where they are located/hosted.
3) @Lily McFluffy Butt: You are not exactly right. Not only do these websites store public information but they store historic information as well. Please think a bit further. You ("you" means a person in general!) register a profile and you do not change the default settings for two years (what if I am a 15 year old child or just an inexperienced user who does not even look at the details about how much I can limit my profile visibility). SteamID will cache and remember those two years forever. And your only way to remove the information is to send your personal identity card over the Internet to a completely unknown individual. I don't have personal issues with steamID or these websites but I am totally emphatic and can see how much this may be a problem for many Steam users.
User A might have used a realistic profile description with a birth date and real name. I saw that the websites show (maybe just provide a link to) screenshots about our profiles. So the information will be remembered forever. Please don't tell me that google caches it too. I searched for quite a lot of profiles before writing this answer. Google and other search engines (web archives, etc.) can't find any of them, but steamID can! These Steam history websites really focus on caching Steam profiles. They simply find their own "tricks" to store the information - directly or indirectly - and keep it updated.
User B might have liked Miley Cyrus (and used her name as profile name: Miley Cyrus) in the past but now she doesn't like her anymore. SteamID will remember the name history forever. Miley Cyrus is not personal information so they just refuse to delete the information. User B doesn't want to see that information on the internet forever. A problem is that all steam users can look up that information. What if User B used profile names they are just not proud of? They grew up and became a responsible person and doesn't want to see how childish they were 10 years ago.
User C had a VAC or game ban. They may not want that ban to be displayed forever. Even Steam doesn't show the ban after many years (7?). SteamID shows it forever. That causes (emotional) damage for a person forever, and nobody deserves this treatment. Cheating is bad but steamID shows that information in a highlighted way. Steamrep banned, etc. You can see where this process leads to. Scammers are bad but I agree with the OP "v-v4" --> Let Valve deal with the scammers and cheaters. It is Valve's responsibility to do something and solve the problems and everyone should respect this.
4) Name and Shame is not allowed on Steam but these websites do exactly the same thing. If a user has ever done something negative (or positive), they remember and show it forever. No matter how small and insignificant that negative (or positive) thing was.
5) Even if we make our profiles friends-only later, these websites will show so much information (which they collected) that our profiles could be set back to public. They remember friends list related information, historically. So this is bypassing steam's privacy settings, in practice. If you open your eyes, you start to see these problems..
6) @Lily McFluffy Butt: "Steam accounts are not personal information". Yes, true. It is up to the users if they give a real name (or facebook link) or other personal information, or not. But we are on Steam to play, not to be shamed (especially innocently) and remembered forever: "right to be forgotten". The steam identifier (or community id) is not personal but it is still a unique identifier. And those unique identifiers make it easy for the websites to remember a person (they link our profiles based on an id that cannot be changed). If you have ever put personal information on your profile, you will be able to see how much this is a problem. Even if the steam profile itself is not personal information but behind the profiles, we are all alive persons, individuals. There is no such a person who has never made any mistakes in their life.
In addition: Please understand the difference between fighting against scammers (which should be done by Valve) and remembering our past life publicly forever. We don't usually tell all our secrets and childhood memories to the public.
7) Certain websites (steamid and so on) also have a profile rating system. How much can it be abused? Some people simply give ratings impulsively ("you answered my Steam chat two days later? I will delete+block you and rate down your profile" -- I have heard such sad stories.. unfortunately) There is no way to remove those subjective (or fake) ratings. The websites may show a bad picture about us even if we are innocent. There is no way to remove such information, again.
Sorry for the long post (and for any possible mistakes --> I am not a native speaker of English), I hope it adds some information to the original question / suggestion.
If you're careless with your information, at the end of the day that's the user's problem. Not Valve's problem to solve. The only way you address that is by eliminating profiles and any avenue for users to share details about themselves. You can never ever rely on uses to understand how to use a system or be conscious of the consequences of misuse. Unfortunately most users are all about that pound of cure instead of an ounce of prevention.
Valve isn't responsible for managing the human condition I'd argue.
No idea but you don't need the API for a lot of it. I'm sure there are rules involved but anyone can use existing scrapers to capture profile names, bans, and tons of other info off their site.
They can try but its not hard to scrape data without a site knowing about it, its also beneficial to steam as many of those sites provide useful information and don't negatively impact Steam in any way. The data is public so they can't block the sites from viewing it, and once they have viewed it they can write it to a database to store it.
100k per day, if you are nice, you get more. some requests may entail multiple userids, which is nice. you can also use multiple apikeys by creating multiple accounts. that is all fine and within terms
anyway, just one thing:
no such website does it without a manual request. it is literally impossible to parse 1+ billion steam accounts to have accurate data for every profile, especially newly created ones.
at most such sites will just use other methods as a fallback, usually they use the api.