What are the potential risks of allowing other websites to access your data, particularly images, in PHP?

Allowing other websites to access your data, particularly images, can pose security risks such as data theft, unauthorized use of images, and potential malware injection. To mitigate these risks, it is important to implement proper access controls, validate user input, and sanitize data before displaying or sharing it with external websites.

// Example of validating and sanitizing user input before accessing data
$imageUrl = $_GET['image_url'];

if(filter_var($imageUrl, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL)) {
    $safeImageUrl = filter_var($imageUrl, FILTER_SANITIZE_URL);
    // Proceed with accessing the image data
} else {
    // Handle invalid input error
}