What are the potential pitfalls of storing IP addresses in a database for a long period of time for tracking purposes?

Storing IP addresses in a database for a long period of time for tracking purposes can raise privacy concerns as it may be considered personal information. To address this issue, it's important to regularly review and delete old IP addresses that are no longer needed for tracking purposes to minimize the risk of data breaches or misuse. 

// Code snippet to delete IP addresses older than a certain date
$deleteDate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime('-1 year')); // Set the date threshold for deletion
$query = "DELETE FROM tracking_table WHERE date_added < '$deleteDate'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

if ($result) {
    echo "Old IP addresses successfully deleted.";
} else {
    echo "Error deleting old IP addresses: " . mysqli_error($connection);
}

Keywords

IP addresses database storage tracking data retention privacy concerns

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