What are the potential implications of using MD5 hashes in PHP for security purposes?

Using MD5 hashes in PHP for security purposes is not recommended as MD5 is considered to be a weak hashing algorithm that is vulnerable to collision attacks. It is better to use stronger hashing algorithms like SHA-256 or bcrypt for better security. To improve security, switch to a more secure hashing algorithm like bcrypt.

$hashed_password = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_BCRYPT);