Chess engine use in a live online game?

Hi, I have just joined. I am sure the answer to my inquiry is already here, I have done a brief search but to no avail.

If I embark on a live online game with someone, what is there to stop me from using a chess engine on a offline computer to help me, apart from my own conscience!?

I am retired now, in the early 1960's I used to play postal chess and sought help from anywhere, time permitting, before posting my move.

Nowadays chess engines do it all, I think. It fascinates me to watch a world championship game, and the commentator says "Mate in 31 moves, we all know this apart from the two players!".

Discussions of cheating are not allowed in the regular forum. The main rule is not to make any accusations in the forum.

There was an article in the last month about chess.com's efforts to fight engine use. https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection

There is a club called the Cheating Forum you can join to discuss. 

Hmm, this thread may be locked soon, because we're not supposed to discuss engine assistance in the General forums. (There's a cheating forum you can join where you can ask these types of questions.)

But in general, it's possible to analyze moves and determine whether they were made by a human or engine. (You can't determine this from a single move, but over many moves or a number of games, you can draw a conclusion.)

Many  thanks for your prompt and informative reply, notmtwain. Are you allowed to give me a link to the article you mention?

I will have a look at the Cheating Forum, strangely in postal chess years ago we never thought we were cheating! I guess this now is the result of the power of chess engines?

Thank you for the link.

And the link to join the Cheating Forum:

https://www.chess.com/groups/view/cheating-forum

Many thanks to all posters for the information you have given. I was wondering how our postal chess of the 1950s fitted in nowadays, we used to consider our games as team games in our club, not cheating.

Did you actually read the site rules when you joined?

No, Diakonia. During my lifetime I have joined many organisations because I was solely interested in the activity - church, rugby, climbing, drama, etc. - and then left them if their rules were not to my liking and they would not at least listen to my concerns. I have no concerns (so far!) about the rules here. Thank you for asking.