What potential pitfalls should be considered when using PHP form mailers, especially in terms of security and data validation?

When using PHP form mailers, it is crucial to consider security vulnerabilities such as injection attacks and data validation issues. To mitigate these risks, always sanitize user input to prevent malicious code execution and validate data to ensure it meets the expected format. Additionally, implement measures like captcha verification and email validation to enhance security. 

// Sanitize user input
$name = filter_var($_POST['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
$message = filter_var($_POST['message'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate email format
if (!filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    // Handle invalid email format error
}

// Validate required fields
if (empty($name) || empty($email) || empty($message)) {
    // Handle missing fields error
}

// Additional security measures like captcha verification can be added here

Keywords

PHP form mailers security data validation XSS attacks SQL injection CSRF tokens

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