BACKGROUND: It appears that there are few problems in web development that do not have multiple solutions. My problem is to decide which solution best suits my needs. I have a confirmation email that sends a name, hash, and email address via an HTTP REQUEST using the $_GET superglobal to a PHP file that matches the hash with an entry in a newsletter roster table. If the match succeeds the value of the status variable is changed from 0 to 1. Before the hash is sent to the roster table it is sanitized using the MySQLi real_escape_string( ) function.
Elsewhere on my website I use the PHP