£2.3bn ‘cloud’ passwords left in wills

Online users are leaving internet passwords in their wills as Britons amass a £2.3 billion digital inheritance, new research suggests.

A poll of 2,000 adults found 25 per cent had more than £200 worth of films, video and music stored online. Nearly a third considered the sum valuable enough to be passed on to loved ones and 11 per cent have already put internet passwords in wills.

Without the passwords, billions of pounds’ worth of films, music and pictures stored in “cloud” services such as Hotmail, Facebook, iCloud and Flickr would be lost.

The research, by cloud computing company Rackspace, found that 53 per cent of those polled held “treasured possessions” in such services.