initially, I like the component very very much.
But, not now....... 2 main things disturbing too much.

1. the size of the COMPONENT. Where entire Joomla is of 2.5MB, this component itself is of 1.5 MB (zipped)

2. more over, beside the size of the COMPONENT, we still have to insert the special CODEs within the forms and those patches.

Original CAPTCHA code is of just 3 PHP files and some Font files and may be some background noise images. But still it can't be of 1.5 MB (zipped).

Looking for a lighter version.......

This is a great component. I am fairly new to Joomla, and I was able to get it up and going with no problems. He even provides the API for developers to start implementing it into their work. However, if you really want to customize this bad boy, you have to spend some time. I have downloaded this component for the first time 2 hours ago and just finished customizing it the way I wanted. It works beautifully. In my opinion, this is still a young component, with a developer that is doing his best at providing free software to the general community. As this component progresses, I'm sure there will be less errors, improved API, and more/easier/simpler customizations.

I installed this on my live site to protect my user registration from unwanted solicitation. At least I can use this to my login and contact module. Not sure if this extension is still under development or not. If yes, hopefully in the next version (not sure when) the sound feature could be implemented plus the flexibility to be able to be put in any form-related modules. If not, then I gotta put my own PHP captcha program on other Joomla forms. Thanks for sharing this. Keep up the good work.

Does what it claims. The install is not for somebody with only a few minutes on their hands though. The actual act of having to patch joomla file by file is tedious and with the changes all over the directory structure, easily pooched if you're not careful. A few oddities I had that might be of help to others:

First, someone back in the review lists said they could never get their images to come up, no matter what they did. Initially I thought this was going to be the case for me as well. Turned out though that the general settings, hncaptcha v1.0 is set, and this simply didn't work (maybe that engine isn't installed by default, who knows, I didn't look into that). Changing that setting to the first choice, core v.1.1 made things work perfectly.

More disturbing to me was the fact that after the intial install, php errors were being generated on unsuccessful captcha entries and during configuration. Both of these situations were generating errors relating to mosConfig_lang being undefined, even though the joomla configuration file defines it. This required commenting out the if statements that checked to see if you had some other language choice set. A second error on an unsuccessful captcha related to another undefined variable, this one specific to this component, "securityImagesLet3rdpartyOverideChoosenPlugin" in SecurityImageChecker.php. I wasnt sure if that was a misspelling of "chosen", or some other error, but it was just a simple if condition commenting out that (and the first branch) got rid of this.

Now having said all that, I've been using joomla for all of a week and a half, and the install (other than being careful to back up the files that the patch required replacing and the other tedious elements like making sure ownership was a ppropriate on the replaced files and whatnot) still took less than an hour to get things up and functional. It's a component well worth having.

This is one sweet component! This is a very nice add on for those that may be looking for that little extra protection from spammers! Like the review from evolvingtech, this component is almost perfect! If you’re working with the latest Joomla (1.0.12), you are going to have to work the patch in manually. My experience was less involved than evolvingtech due to the fact I was able to replace the Joomla files with the modified file that came in the patch for 1.0.12 via FTP. It was still more involved than I would recommend for someone new to Joomla and new to the replacing of core files via FTP. If the developer would take the time to tweek this component so that the patch was easer to install, it would be prefect!

This item works well and is a great addition to my site, after following the directions I had the CAPTCHA engine installed and up and running in under five minutes. Keep up the great work!!

had a few attempts to install & get this working. Main component installed no problems, but had to install the patch files manually.
Then had the problem a few other people have had with the CAPTCHA image not showing up. Turns out my server (Ubuntu 6.1 LAMP server) did not have support for the GD image manipulation library. Installed using apt-get install php5-gd, & restart Apache.

Now it works like a dream.

Sure the documentation is a bit light as I have seen some reviewers say, but the configuration is pretty self-explanatory. I have used this 3x and each time had it up and running in 5 minutes and I am still a joomla novice. The thing I don't like (and correct be if I am wrong) is there seems to be no way of making the captcha image not hot linked to the developer's website. I would prefer to pay to have that link removed than leave it as is. Also, since the "reload" button (for the captcha image in the event the user can not read it) is right next to the captcha image, the user can easily miss the reload button and click the captcha image, thus ending up at the developer's website. That is unsettling to user and site owner alike, since the user was obviously in the middle of doing something that required captcha image safe guards, like signing in, registering, using a contact form, etc.

I was looking for such a module, and this it it!

Installing and running joomla 1.0.12, Virtuemart 1.0.9, Windoze dev box (yeah I know, severs are linux, and PHP 5.1.2.

I read all the info I could and followed the instructions. The initial result was that the image was not being shown at all. First problem was not having the "GD" installed (which is a library called gif draw, see http:/www.libgd.org/Main_Page for info & downloads). After editing my php.ini file to enable the GD section, it was producing an image source stream, but not displaying.

I downloaded the core patches, which enable the CAPTCHA in the Joomla default functions. Oh, I recommend not enabling the administrator login part until you have the normal site working (or you are locked out).

After this still wasn't generating the image. I read a post about turning off debug mode to make it work, but that didn't do it.

I finally had to edit the code because the error output (seen by pasting the URL of the image into a new browser page) was complaining about cant rewrite headers. I had to change the source hn_captcha.class.php, commenting out line 660 which tries to set a header content type.

After that one line fix it worked perfectly, in both IE 7 and Firefox 2.0.

Again, great module!

Dysfunctional even after practicing code changes on test site. Easier to do routine maintenance of spammers than deal with this.

I've tried using this on several occasions, on various sites, hours searching the 4 corners of the web for some clue (documentation totally sux) - installs w/o error, but just doesn't show up.

The CAPTCHA engine does exactly what it is supposed to do, in that it works very nicely on Joomla, providing the security protection needed for registration, login, etc. It integrates very nicely. There is one drawback, however; it is the installation process.

To work with Joomla 1.0.12, here is what I had to do to get it working:

1. Download the com_securityimages4.1.2.zip file. The link provided for downloading from this site (extensions.joomla.org) goes to an invalid page and the webmaster needs to correct this. It does take you to the www.waltercedric.com site. From there, look for the downloads link, and then to Joomla, and then further to security. There you will find the com_securityimages4.1.2.zip file.

2. Install it from Joomla
You have to know to install it as a Component and not a module or mambot (plugin).

3. Once successfully installed, go to the Components --> Security Images --> Edit General Settings and then click on the Joomla Patches tab. Here you find that a patch must be loaded. Conveniently the provide you with a link for patch, but there is no listing of patches for Joomla 1.0.12 from their link, only 1.0.11 and earlier.

4. Installing a patch after the download
I did some rummaging and found that there is a patch for 1.0.12 on Walter's site at:

ttp://www.waltercedric.com/component/option,com_docman/task,cat_view/gid,291/dir,DESC/order,name/limit,5/limitstart,5/

Running the patch through the Joomla installer does not seem to work. I examined the files and did a diff of the individual patch files against the installed files and found small differences in the code.

You could hand edit the files or just replace them with the ones in the patch distribution (if you are replacing the files, you would need to keep track of file ownership and permissions so that your installation is not disrupted). Needless to say, back up your files and take Joomla offline before making the changes.

There are many files that need to be replaced/modified and the directory structure of where the files belong is anything but flat. It is very easy to inadvertently clobber a file or two if you get distracted or are not careful.

After this is done, test your installation.

Although I had to jump through many hoops to do the install, it worked flawlessly upon the first install!

Is it worth it to go though this amount of effort for the convenience of security? Well, if you're in the business of hosting, security is everything.

I'm extremely happy I have this security tool. I hope there will be support running it on Joomla 1.5. I have not seen any indication of a new version in preparation. Hopefully, we;ll all be pleasantly surprised!

It really is a great component for everything else but Virtuemart.

BUT...

It does NOT work with Virtuemart as they claim to do.

That is really a shame, otherwise it would be a 5 star component.

Hope they find out a way to fully integrate with it.

Legoland.

I installed the component, it just didn't work. I patched the core code manually according to instruction, but it never even shows the capctha image. I was surprised to see that there are some really obvious bug that were showed as warning/error php message. For examples, php complains that $mosConfig_lang is undefined, it caused a file not to be loaded because of that. I just put "global $mosConfig_lang", and it fixed the bug. How can anyone miss that?

I have not seen a Joomla component with high rating that doesn't even work. I really suspect who post the high ratings.

Downloaded this component along with the patch files and it worked out of the box no problems.