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Rackspace research highlights Britain's £2.3bn digital treasure chest

13th October 2011

Rackspace has issued a report detailing the extent to which residents of the UK are relying on the cloud for storage of digital possessions. In conjunction with University of London, the hosting giants surveyed over 2,000 members of the public to establish that a quarter of the population now has digital treasures with a monetary value of over £200 stored in various ‘cloud’ services such as Flickr and Facebook - equating to a total national value of £2.3bn.

The study, ‘Generation Cloud’, commissioned in association with the centre for Creative and Social Technology (CAST) at Goldsmiths, University of London, revealed a number of interesting facts, including that a generation of British users - two-thirds of respondents (66%) - were relying on cloud computing services every day without realising it.

It also found that more than one in ten of us have already put vital internet passwords in our wills (or are planning to) so that family members will have access to treasured possessions online. Without these passwords being included in wills billions of pounds worth of films, music and pictures stored in cloud services such as Hotmail, Facebook, iCloud and Flickr would be lost.

Other key findings from the report included:

That over half (53 per cent) of the public has what they consider ‘treasured possessions’ in online services such as Hotmail, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr
That 31% of UK adults can now identify a ‘digital inheritance’
That we’re in danger of becoming a nation of ’e-Hoarders’ - as disorganised online as we are in real life and rarely deleting anything.

"The cloud is increasingly becoming part of our everyday work and personal lives,” said Rackspace’s Fabio Torlini, about the findings.

“With an estimated £2.3bn invested in digital treasures, it's imperative that people consider the associated security and legacy implications.

“Businesses have a great opportunity now to shape consumer understanding of cloud computing and build trust. It's important to remember that although cloud is for everyone, it's not for everything."

Matthew Strain, Partner at Strain Keville Solicitors, said the survey highlighted the difficulty of establishing actual value in digital goods as inheritance:

"With more photos, books, music [etc] being stored online and in digital format, the question of what happens to these when people are gone becomes more important every day.

“Online possessions - from digital photos and videos to music and apps - have monetary and emotional value to their owners, and potentially their loved ones. People have not yet come to grips with the value of these digital possessions and the risk is that they may be lost if the owner dies, or even that or that their estate may be liable for ongoing subscriptions to online magazines or newspapers, for instance.

“We have started to advise clients on the topic of digital inheritance as it is something people should be thinking, and doing something about as part of the provisions in their will. Making provisions for digital inheritance in a will or codicil is relatively straightforward."

For further details of this research, download the white paper Generation Cloud here

A great infographic outlining the research can also be found here