It's not cheating but it's against TOS.

Regarding Pokerstars they want to stay compliant with all country laws being a publcially traded company. They have broken into a few state markets and don't want to miss out with future penalties as more states come aboard.

Party and 888 seem to feel the same with this stance and likely are enforcing the rules too but other smaller networks still left likely don't care so much.

So does that mean you can play on the sites that don't care? I wouldn't take that risk because what if you run up a lot of money and they catch it before paying you they could easily close your account and take your money claiming you broke TOS. This wouldn't be shady either it's not like the recent story of the guy who left his license in the car at a live casino who who a jackpot promo this is obvious breaking of TOS.

Their are some bitcoin type gambling sites for casino/sports that prohibit USA customers but ask for zero information except an email address so if someone vpns them strong chances they always will get paid but again it might not be worth the risk.

Pokerstars bans people for life for this if they get caught so why even attempt it? They can catch a vpn better then anyone else we've seen.

If they didn't do anything about it everyone serious about poker would vpn to play.

Buying an account like what Brian Hastings did was bad, especially because it was a big losing account if I recall. That is extremely unethical by itself but tbeir is a difference between using a vpn and teamviewing into a Canadian (or place where Stars is legal) to play poker. The person playing that way would likely deal with some lag but they aren't likely to ever get caught that way if it's a legitimate account and you can bet a lot of these top pros are doing that these days for scoop/wcoop using their own accounts to prevent the potential vpn connection drop.