What are common pitfalls when using PHP for contact forms?

One common pitfall when using PHP for contact forms is not properly sanitizing user input, leaving the form vulnerable to malicious attacks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting. To solve this issue, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() to sanitize user input before processing it. 

// Sanitize user input before processing
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']);
$message = htmlspecialchars($_POST['message']);

Keywords

SQL injection form validation CSRF protection email headers XSS vulnerabilities

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