Yes. Villari uses DNS filtering: the same technology that schools, hospitals, and major companies have relied on for years to protect their networks. On an iPhone it installs as a configuration profile; on Android, a Private DNS setting. Both are built directly into the phone, so Villari doesn’t need special access, doesn’t touch your parent’s apps, photos, or messages, and can be removed in under a minute. The underlying technology is standard. What we’ve built on top of it is purpose-built for families navigating this with the people they love.
This is one of the most honest questions families face, and it deserves a real answer. Technically, Villari can be installed on any supported device. But we believe strongly in your loved one’s autonomy and dignity, values that are core to why Villari exists in the first place.
Our recommendation: have the conversation first. Many families find that framing Villari as “something I set up because I got worried, not because I don’t trust you” lands better than a surprise installation. You might also show them what the Dashboard actually sees (remarkably little) to address concerns about privacy or being watched.
If your loved one has cognitive decline and is unable to make fully informed decisions, that’s a different situation that may warrant a different approach, ideally in consultation with their care team.
Ultimately, installing protection without consent is a decision only you can make, based on your knowledge of your family. We’re not here to judge it. We just want you to make it thoughtfully.
It’s possible, but unlikely. Villari is designed to run quietly in the background: it doesn’t appear as an app, it doesn’t send notifications, and there’s nothing visible on the device that would prompt someone to look for it. Removing it requires navigating deliberately to a specific settings menu. If you want to verify that Villari is still active at any time, check your Dashboard and see if query activity is showing. If the numbers move, that’s a good signal to verify the installation is still in place. How do I check if Villari is working?
Villari is built for two groups: the people being protected, and the people doing the protecting.
If you’re an adult child supporting an aging parent, a caregiver for a family member with cognitive decline, or someone supporting a vulnerable adult who spends time online, Villari was built for you. If you’re the person being protected and you want to browse confidently without worrying about scams, Villari was built for you too.
Villari is also available to organizations: senior living facilities, disability support services, adult day programs, and any organization whose mission includes protecting vulnerable people online.
Villari offers three plans, billed monthly or annually
Every plan includes the same full protection — the only difference is how many people you’re covering. Start with a free trial before you commit to anything. See full pricing
Because real protection doesn’t live in an app — it lives in the network. Villari works at the DNS layer, before the application level. That’s what allows it to block threats before they ever reach a browser, an inbox, or a screen. An app-based filter can only react to what it sees inside the app. Villari acts before anything loads, on every browser and every connection the device makes. That’s a fundamentally more effective position. The tradeoff is a five-minute setup instead of a one-tap download. We think it’s worth it.
Antivirus software was designed for a different threat era. It looks for malicious code that has already reached your device, like viruses, malware, or ransomware, and tries to neutralize it after arrival. That model was adequate when the main threat was infected software downloads.
The threats targeting older adults today are different:
Phishing pages — websites designed to look exactly like a bank, the IRS, or Medicare, built to steal login credentials. They contain no virus. Antivirus doesn’t flag them.
Tech support scams — fake alerts that mimic Microsoft or Apple, instructing the user to call a number and hand over remote access to their device. No malicious code involved. Antivirus doesn’t catch them.
Gift card scams — pages and phone flows designed to trick someone into buying gift cards and reading out the numbers. No file is ever downloaded. Antivirus is irrelevant.
Fake delivery and package scams — fraudulent links sent by text that lead to credential-harvesting pages. Antivirus won’t block the DNS request that takes you there.
AI-driven impersonation fraud — increasingly sophisticated fake pages that impersonate trusted institutions with near-perfect accuracy. No signature for antivirus to match.
Villari blocks access to the malicious domains that host all of these threats, before the page loads, before the form appears, before the damage is done. It doesn’t replace antivirus. It covers the gap antivirus was never designed to fill.
Parental controls require someone to manually identify and block specific websites — one at a time. If a new scam site appears today, it won’t be blocked until someone adds it. The internet doesn’t wait for that.
Villari blocks new malicious domains automatically and continuously. When a new phishing page, fake Medicare site, or tech support scam domain appears, it gets blocked before anyone in your family encounters it — no action required from you or anyone else.
There’s also a design difference. Parental controls were built to manage children’s screen time and filter age-inappropriate content. Villari was built for a different problem entirely: protecting adults from the fraud, scams, and predatory sites that specifically target them. The Guardrails feature lets you customize protection for your loved one’s specific situation, but the core blocking happens automatically, in the background, all the time.
No, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Villari significantly reduces risk by blocking access to known malicious domains, and our threat intelligence covers more than 800 million domains, updated continuously. But new scam infrastructure appears every day, and no service blocks 100% of threats. What Villari provides is a meaningful, proactive layer of protection that catches the vast majority of web-based threats before they reach your loved one. Scams that happen entirely over a phone call, without any web component, are outside Villari’s scope.
Villari partners with organizations that share our mission of protecting vulnerable people and the families who support them. Here are some selected examples
Safe Rx — Supporting medication safety through solutions designed to reduce prescription misuse, diversion, and abuse.
CI Checked — Providing trusted background check services that help individuals and families make informed decisions about people entering their homes and lives.
We’re continuing to build our partner network with organizations focused on safety, aging services, caregiving, and fraud prevention. Interested in partnering with Villari? [Get in touch →]
Villari’s leadership team brings together experience in cybersecurity, software development, and enterprise technology, including decades of combined work in Fortune 500 environments. More importantly, every person on our executive team has been personally affected by elder fraud in their own family. This isn’t an abstract problem we decided to solve. It’s a personal one. About
Villari begins protecting the device immediately upon installation. The Dashboard may take up to 24 hours to begin displaying activity data. If your loved one has been online and you still see zero queries after 24 hours, check that the installation completed correctly. → [How do I know Villari is working?]
You’ll have immediate access to your Protection Dashboard, where you can see blocked threats and total query volume for each Villager. You can also configure Guardrails, optional content controls that let you customize protection for each person. Villari works in the background from the moment it’s installed. There’s nothing you or your loved one need to do or change about how to use your device.
Villari handles the technical protection layer, but awareness and conversation are powerful too. We’ve put together a resource series called “You Can Do This” with practical, non-technical guidance for caregivers. See our Blog