What security considerations should be taken into account when allowing users to view and interact with profiles in a PHP-based forum or website?

When allowing users to view and interact with profiles in a PHP-based forum or website, it is important to consider security measures to prevent unauthorized access or malicious activities. One key consideration is to validate user input to prevent SQL injection attacks. Additionally, it is crucial to implement proper authentication and authorization mechanisms to control access to user profiles. It is also recommended to sanitize user input to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. 

// Example of validating user input to prevent SQL injection
$user_id = $_GET['user_id'];
$user_id = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $user_id);

// Example of implementing authentication and authorization
if($_SESSION['user_id'] != $user_id) {
    // Redirect user to unauthorized page
    header("Location: unauthorized.php");
    exit();
}

// Example of sanitizing user input to prevent XSS attacks
$username = $_GET['username'];
$username = htmlspecialchars($username, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

Keywords

SQL injection Cross-site scripting (XSS) Input validation Password hashing CSRF protection

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