What are the potential pitfalls of using $_POST in PHP forms and how can they be avoided?

Potential pitfalls of using $_POST in PHP forms include vulnerability to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and data manipulation. To avoid these pitfalls, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in your application. 

// Example of sanitizing user input before using it
$username = isset($_POST['username']) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['username']) : '';
$password = isset($_POST['password']) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['password']) : '';

Keywords

$_POST PHP forms security vulnerabilities data validation cross-site scripting

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