Why must you cast a void pointer before dereferencing it?

A void pointer is a generic pointer that does not contain information about the type of data it points to. Therefore, before dereferencing it, we must cast it to specify the type of data it points to. This allows the compiler to correctly interpret the data and perform the dereferencing operation. Option A is incorrect because casting to a null pointer would not provide the necessary type information for dereferencing. Option C is incorrect because casting a pointer does not change its memory usage. Option D is incorrect because C++ does allow void pointers to be dereferenced as long as they are first cast to the correct type.