What are the limitations of using href links to access files from external servers in PHP?

When using href links to access files from external servers in PHP, there are limitations such as security risks and potential performance issues. To address these concerns, it is recommended to use PHP's file_get_contents() function to fetch the contents of the external file and then display or process it accordingly.

<?php
$url = 'https://example.com/file.txt';
$content = file_get_contents($url);
echo $content;
?>