When someone asks to connect to your mother's PC, they're asking you.
The person who buys Guardian is usually not the person being telephoned. So Guardian puts the decision where the caller cannot reach it: with you. Every new remote connection to their PC is refused until you approve it.
Mom's PC
Someone is asking to connect. Waiting for approval.
Nothing is connected. Nothing is shared.
Email · Xcelcor Guardian
Approve a connection to Mom's PC?
102.54.9.17 · AnyDesk · 2:14pm
Allow once · Always allow · Refuse
“Don't let anyone onto your computer” is a rule. A rule loses to a good liar.
You can have that conversation a dozen times. It still depends on her holding the line at the exact moment a confident, plausible stranger is telling her the bank account is being emptied right now.
Approval is not a rule. It is a lock. In the default setting she has no approve button on that PC at all — so there is nothing for the caller to talk her into pressing. The request arrives with you instead, with the address and the time, somewhere the caller has no way to reach.
Who is allowed to approve is set on this website, behind your account. Nobody sitting at that PC, or controlling it remotely, can change it.
You don't need to know anything about computers to do this.
One question settles it, and the scam has no answer for it.
“Did you ask someone to connect?”
Ring her and ask. She can't check anything herself, because the only person available to check with is the one doing it to her. You can — and there's no version of this call that survives you asking, because the caller can't be on the phone with you.
That's the whole skill
If she didn't ask for it, or you can't reach her, refuse. Refusing costs you a call back. Approving wrongly can cost her savings.
You won't be asked often
A technician she actually books can be whitelisted after the first time, so a request reaching you at all means an address nobody has ever approved.
What they receive
A link, a short install, and Guardian on that PC. After it is installed the PC appears in your dashboard, and approval requests for it start coming to you.
What you get asked
An email, and the same request in your dashboard: the address asking to connect, the remote tool it is using, and the time. You choose allow once, always allow that address, or refuse. There is no app to install on your phone — you open the email, or the dashboard in a browser.
What happens if you miss it
Nothing connects. Guardian refuses by default, so an unanswered request is a refused request. The worst case is a phone call from her asking you to approve the technician she actually booked.
What you cannot see
Her screen, her messages, her documents, her passwords, her banking. You approve connections to a computer. You do not get a window into her life, and she should be told that plainly.
She can approve for herself. For a parent, that's the wrong setting.
The same setting lets the owner of a PC approve their own connections, by link or by PIN. It's worth being straight about why we don't recommend it here.
Both versions are far better than nothing. An approval link opens only on a device she has enrolled and never on the PC itself, so nobody controlling that computer can wave their own session through. A PIN is held in the account on this website and never shown in the app, so it can't be read off her screen, and the 30-second pause genuinely does stop some calls.
But she is the one on the phone. The whole technique these callers use is getting somebody to do one more small thing — read an email, tap Allow, type four digits. Every one of those is a small thing. An approval from someone who isn't on that call is the only version of this a phone call cannot argue with.
Keep self-approval for a household where there is nobody to nominate. For a parent, be their Trusted Guardian.
The path is short.
- Choose Family, or start the 14-day trial.
- Send the installation link to the person you want to protect.
- They install Guardian on their Windows PC.
- Name yourself as their Trusted Guardian.
- From then on, every new connection to that PC comes to you first.
Family is $99.99/year for up to 5 PCs, or $11.99 a month. The trial does not ask for a card.