What are the best practices for handling session variables and cookies in PHP to ensure user privacy and security?

To ensure user privacy and security when handling session variables and cookies in PHP, it is important to properly validate and sanitize user input, store sensitive data securely, use HTTPS to encrypt data transmission, and set appropriate cookie attributes such as secure and httpOnly.

// Start session
session_start();

// Set session variables
$_SESSION['user_id'] = 123;

// Set cookie with secure and httpOnly attributes
setcookie('user_id', 123, time() + 3600, '/', '', true, true);