For instance, the Enthusiast and Fanatic badges. Both are based on logging in daily. For an extended period, and I do check almost daily, but living in the real world means that there may be a day when I simply can not log in to stack.

Now as a programmer I instantly think: "What if I just automate it?", it would be super easy to reload the page automatically on schedule. But that's cheating. . . Right? I plan on checking anyway, but the fallback would be nice. But still cheating. . .

Now I haven't done that, but what happens if I did? How "bad" is it to cheat on those badges? I mean is there no real reason not too, or could it get a user banished? And I'm sure there are plenty of other easily cheated badges, those two just jump out at me as extremely easy.

I'm not looking for a discussion on the ins and outs of cheating, I can come up with a dozen ways to do it, but on the consequences, or lack there of. On one level the badges (unlike rep) mean very little, on the other hand, it's still cheating. Or is it? Isn't the point to show dedication? And wouldn't cheating show that? Are there rules somewhere about this? Is the precedent?