note 14538 added to function.parse-url.php

My web hosts reckon that it's safer to switch off the ability to type query strings after the url, so that people can't hack into your data. This is causing me heaps of problems, as all the books, scripts etc just call variables from the previous page or from forms, but instead they say i have to use $HTTP_POST_VARS[my_variable] This also means that i can't do queries with links on my pages e.g.http://www.mywebsite.com/contacts.php?action=add and calling session variables doesn't seem to work either and it's doing my head in and I'm having to find obscure ways of doing stuff, like this parse_url etc. What do you guys think about this? are they being overly paranoid and making me type more code than i need to and overly complicating things for a newbie? I agree with whoever said above that having to use parse_url is missing the point. Surely my database will be safe if the add/modify/delete pages are protected? i do have access to php.ini, so i could change the config, but my server people have advised me not to. opinions/help appreciated! http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.parse-url.php