Now internet passwords are left in wills

 Increasing number of people in Britain leave their internet passwords in their wills as they pass on their treasured "digital inheritance" worth billions of pounds to their loved ones, a media report said Thursday.

The poll of 2,000 adults found 25 percent had more than 200 pounds worth of treasured possessions stored online. Nearly a third considered the sum valuable enough to be passed on to loved ones and 11 percent have already put internet passwords in their wills, Daily Mail reported.

Without the passwords being included in wills they would all be lost. The research, by cloud computing company Rackspace, found that 53 percent of those polled held "treasured possessions" in such services.

It estimates that Britons have amassed a 2.3-billion-pound digital inheritance. This number was reached by multiplying 24 percent of the UK over-18 population, which is 11,568,000, by 200 pounds, which is the average value of files held online, the newspaper said.

A quarter said they had "special photos" stored online, one in 10 had treasured videos and the same number kept sentimental emails from loved ones.

Lawyers described the passing on of valuable passwords as a major change to the traditional way wills have been drawn up.

Matthew Strain, partner at London law firm Strain Keville, said: "With more photos, books, music and so on being stored online and in digital format, the question of what happens to these when people are gone becomes more important every day.

"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," he said.

By 2020, a third are expected to store all music online while a quarter said all their photos will be kept online.