What potential pitfalls can arise from relying on cookies for maintaining variables in PHP?

Relying on cookies for maintaining variables in PHP can lead to security vulnerabilities, as cookies can be easily manipulated by users. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to use sessions instead of cookies for storing sensitive information or variables. 

// Start a session
session_start();

// Store a variable in the session
$_SESSION['variable_name'] = 'value';

// Retrieve the variable from the session
$variable = $_SESSION['variable_name'];

// Destroy the session when it is no longer needed
session_destroy();

Keywords

cookies session variables security vulnerabilities data manipulation PHP programming

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