What are the potential pitfalls of using IP addresses to track unique visitors in PHP scripts?

Using IP addresses to track unique visitors in PHP scripts can be unreliable due to factors such as shared IP addresses, dynamic IP assignments, and the use of proxies or VPNs. To overcome these pitfalls, it is recommended to use cookies or session variables to track unique visitors instead.

session_start();

if(!isset($_SESSION['visitor_id'])) {
    $_SESSION['visitor_id'] = uniqid();
}

echo "Visitor ID: " . $_SESSION['visitor_id'];