What are some best practices for user profile management in PHP, including handling sensitive information like passwords?

When managing user profiles in PHP, it is crucial to handle sensitive information like passwords securely. One best practice is to always hash passwords before storing them in the database using a strong hashing algorithm like bcrypt. Additionally, it is important to sanitize and validate user input to prevent SQL injection and other security vulnerabilities. 

// Hashing the password before storing it in the database
$password = $_POST['password'];
$hashed_password = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);

// Sanitizing and validating user input
$username = filter_var($_POST['username'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

Keywords

password hashing secure authentication user input validation session management encryption

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