Q on (re-)joining the Federation(s)

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It is completely up to you. But, if you want to play rated OTB chess in the US you will have to join US Chess (formally called USCF).  Just let them know you are a returnung member and they will assign you the same ID. There is also the option for online rated play here and on ICC.

You could also play on FIDE Online Arena and get an official FIDE online rating. In general though, you join a national federation and then if you play in a FIDE rated event you could end up with a FIDE rating (if you meet all the requirements).

You don't need to join any federation if all you want to do is play online and don't care about "official" ratings.

Short answer?  Online ratings don't mean squat.

Longer answer: Sites like chess.com have a rating system so that members can have competitive games.  Because each rating pool is significantly different, comparisons from one site to another are "problematic".

Sleaze Factor: In its' infinite greed, FIDE has come up with a way of awarding "amateur master" titles.  I forget what it's called (Arena maybe?), but you can check the FIDE website. Widely ridiculed, it's at least another photo ID...

Speaks well for a dog.

if you Can play OTB ("over the board") at a chess club or participate in chess tournaments and you live in the United states, Join the USCF and you will (in time) get an USCF rating.

if you're Very serious, and are willing to travel to play against strong chessplayers and have the ambition to be Very, very good at chess; you will get a FIDE rating.... and other people can tell you much more about how to do that, than I can.

If you casual, and find it dificult to play in chess clubs, you should play chess here at chess.com where you will be given a rating.

this rating isn't as definitive as a USCF/or FIDE rating.

but most of us play chess, to improve and to have fun- and you don't need an number to do that.

I don't really see that Chess.com, etc are competing with national federations. Chess.com is just a platform for playing chess online (with various other features. But you're not going to be able to use your Chess.com membership to play in over-the-board tournaments. If just want to play chess online then there's no point in shelling out for a USCF membership. But if you want to compete in rated over-the-board events then you're gonna have to have an active USCF (or whatever your relevant national federation is) membership.

Not exactly. Both the USCF and FIDE have their own online rating process for games. USCF teamed up with ICC and Chess.com to offer officially rated games (under different rating pools than OTB) and FIDE runs their own site for the games.

The USCF will also use Online USCF official ratings to seed the rating forumula, if you have one, when you begin playing OTB tourneys as a new, unrated player. If you have an old rating, that will be used instead.

For USCF play here, the following group is used:

https://www.chess.com/groups/home/uschess

The USCF web site totally sux. I have to use it all the time as a TD and it is the pits.

It is also telling that they don't have the URL uscf.org, that belongs to the US Cycling Federation. The chess players were squabbling and fighting and dragging their feet on deveoping an on-line presence for at least a decade beyond when they should have been all out for it. Erik should be thankful that they are so lame, or his (this) site might not be much of anything.

As for your former membership, the USCF still considers you & your old membership as just lapsed and will want to assign your old user ID# and rating to you 30 years later. To be sure you get the right reassignment of your ID, you proably should write up a letter like this OP and mail it in. Be sure to give your last active time and date of birth, which should match your name in their old records.

FIDE also has its "Online Arena", but, as with USCF, the online rankings don't count for squat in regards to your OTB rating. It's basically just a way for USCF and FIDE to collect licensing revenue from commercial chess servers with the selling point of offering the user an "official" USCF/FIDE rating (which is technically true, but it doesn't really mean anything).

In short, they can't. Not really. FIDE touts its anti-cheating measures on its Online Arena, but it reality there's no sure-fire way to ensure no one is cheating with online play. And that's why its hard to take FIDE seriously when they talk about merging online with OTB ratings for blitz. It's just a marketing ploy really. Note the way they word it - OTB blitz ratings are added to one's Online Area rating, but one's Online rating isn't added to the OTB rating.

To answer you computer question, it gets handled just like other games here (for the US Chess group). If the admins suspect something, there is a report. If players suspect something they can report just like any other game or they can bring it to the admins for checking and potential reporting.