Fraud

Some scammers even use the profile of people they find on the official Valve website. it's kinda sad that their pictures and names are being used to scam others

Pretty sure it has always fallen under the "the Content is not pornographic, does not contain threats or incite violence, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;" part of the Terms of Service, similar to how anti-bot rules fall under the "the Content is not spam, is not machine or randomly-generated, " part of the Terms of Service, rather than being in FAQ or Guidelines.

( Guidelines DID have a "Use the appropriate avenues for support. If you have an issue with another user, submit a ticket with a user report, rather than calling them out within the community or on the forum", but that pretty explicitly only covered internal SG calling out; Pretty sure the ToS bit was the premise for calling out extending to "non-obvious information related to any individual, so long as the individual isn't a public figure and the matter isn't related to the individual's actions in that public role". As further evidence of that, SG staff were exempt from the public figure exception, due to the Guideline protecting SG users, indicating that there were definitely two overlapping rules being followed on the matter. Though that might have just been covered by the then-also-existing guideline of "When posting content, it should respect the privacy and rights of others.", though that really just seems redundant to the Terms of Service consideration, so one'd assume that didn't actually add anything itself.)

That said, it does seem to in fact be noted in the current Guidelines: "Private or identifying information. Users in the community have a right to privacy. Do not post their private or identifying information without their consent. For example, their name, address, phone number, photos, or private messages."

It does feel a bit unintuitive to associate it to the current bit, until you reach the "private messages" part, and realize it's pretty casual about what it intends with its associations. Moreover, it's pretty obviously similar to the previous guideline, and the ToS element hasn't changed, so it should be straightforward to interpret that the calling out rules haven't changed. And, even if it is interpreted as not being in the rules somehow, staff was at last check still acting on the rule, so the listed rules don't much matter in terms of the expectations the OP'd be running into. :P

TL;DR version: This is indeed calling out, and that's still against site rules. Technically, if it's a username used by multiple steam users you may possibly get away with referencing the username, but any direct account linking or other form of obvious identity clarification would most certainly be a rule violation.

( Well, unless the OP can make an argument for the individual being a public figure, in their role of being a scammer; Even the SG user protection rule can have exceptions if the public figure role is deemed large enough, as is proven when konrads was made an exception to the calling out rule, being deemed a public figure in his role as.. uh.. a konrad. <.<; And there was no biteback when threads were made negatively referencing Humble support by name. So theoretically there's also a point where negatively referencing a steamid would also be acceptable. Iirc anyone suspended from SG was also considered an exception, so that'd also be a consideration. [Really, this topic hasn't come up in years, so sorry about the somewhat hazy and uncertain presentation, which is of course made even more uncertain by how staff and their associated expectations have changed since then. :P] )

The mods will not ask something, they will directly suspend you.

And the punishment for it is, nearly, always much higher as the bad boys get.

So better not count on "it isn't anymore in the rules/FAQ/guidelines" because it is still enforced.
If only for people that have a sg account or not, is the only thing that is not sure and maybe allow a calling out of someone without a sg account.

To be honest, I believed the story until he mentioned Skype. This is the first thing that made me doubt

Skype is still a thing???

Most people are uniformed or just stupid

Because psychology. They're set up in ways to exploit weak points in people's guards and rely on catching at least someone once in a while at a vulnerable enough moment. Their "logic" immediately falls apart if you think about it even for a second, but they try to rush people through it and not give them time to think. Like how this method tries to panic the victim with the whole "IF YOU DON'T ACT NOW, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE TERMINATED" crap, or how the "pls vote for my team" variant tries to exploit people's desire to help others with "just a small favour" (and if that one is via a phished friend's account, they immediately switch to guilt tripping and threats if you refuse, going on about how you're "not a real friend" if you don't wanna do a small thing for them). It's extremely exploitative.

And the worst part is- these aren't even the worst kinds of phishing scams... I'd imagine these don't make enough profit to be an "industry" since Steam users with actually valuable accounts are more wary. So it's mostly random arseholes causing chaos or trying to get a quick buck. Meanwhile, there are entire criminal organizations with whole call centers (using fake company fronts) which have the sole goal of tricking people (especially old people, because dementia makes people very vulnerable) into calling them so they can empty their bank accounts. T.T

People do fall for them. Most don’t, but a handful do. It only takes a few minutes per failed target, so they can reach out to dozens of people per day. Even more if they use bots.
The perpetrators usually live somewhere very cheap, where just a handful of victims for low amounts is a decent income.

You just made me and my friend laugh, thanks)))

Oh, you reminded me of an interesting incident. My roommate once sent me a link via Steam to some "gift card" site. I went without hesitation and immediately realized that it was some kind of phishing site, because I was immediately redirected to a site where I had to enter my login and password.
And what is strange in this story, when I told him that it was a scam, he replied that he had not written anything to me and that he constantly receives messages that someone is entering his Gmail and other networks. In the end, it turned out to be a virus on his laptop, which sent various phishing sites through applications in which he was authorized. It's also interesting that he didn't get anything stolen (he only had RDR2 and DayZ on his Steam account, but that's not a bad goal in my opinion).