Data/email privacy prior to server migration

[ianevans]

Getting ready to migrate to a new server and hosting company. I was wondering what the best practices are for protecting your info (say, email files) from the host your leaving?

Would it be enough to do an OS reload prior to closing the account so as to format the drives?

[creeking]

are you concerned about the webhost's backups?

[ianevans]

I don't have a backup service on our old dedicated server. Just thinking that when you cancel the acct, they still have physical access to people's email files. Perhaps being paranoid but just wanted to know what people did to scrub their servers.

[phranque]

even if you wipe the live server clean, the hosting company almost certainly has their own server backups as suggested by creeking, regardless of your backup capability.