What security risks are associated with passing URLs as parameters in PHP?

Passing URLs as parameters in PHP can lead to security risks such as SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, and remote code execution. To mitigate these risks, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the URL parameters before using them in any database queries or outputting them to the user.

// Sanitize and validate URL parameter
$url = filter_var($_GET['url'], FILTER_SANITIZE_URL);

// Use the sanitized URL parameter in your code
echo "The URL you provided is: " . $url;