What are the potential pitfalls of displaying all data from a MySQL table in PHP without proper filtering?

Displaying all data from a MySQL table in PHP without proper filtering can expose sensitive information and potentially lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the data before displaying it to the user. This can be achieved by using prepared statements and parameterized queries to securely retrieve and display the data.

<?php
// Establish a connection to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Prepare and execute a parameterized query to retrieve data from the table
$stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM table_name");
$stmt->execute();
$result = $stmt->get_result();

// Display the retrieved data after properly sanitizing it
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    // Sanitize and display the data
    echo htmlspecialchars($row['column_name']) . "<br>";
}

// Close the connection
$stmt->close();
$conn->close();
?>