What are some potential pitfalls of using IP addresses to track user activity in PHP?

Using IP addresses to track user activity in PHP can be unreliable as multiple users can share the same IP address (e.g. in the case of a shared network or proxy server). This can lead to inaccurate tracking and potentially misattributing actions to the wrong user. To solve this issue, it is recommended to use session cookies or user authentication to track user activity more accurately. 

// Use session cookies to track user activity instead of relying solely on IP addresses

session_start();

// Set a session variable to track user activity
$_SESSION['last_activity'] = time();

// Retrieve user activity timestamp
$last_activity = $_SESSION['last_activity'];

// Use the $last_activity variable to track user activity

Keywords

IP addresses user activity tracking PHP privacy concerns data security

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