The majority of British people don't back up their data even though they know how to do it.
New research by Avast published today to coincide with World BackUp Day found that 42% of Brits do not back up their data and files.
Of those running the gauntlet of data loss in the event of theft, infection, accidental deletion, or destruction, 52% said they didn't keep any information on their device that was important enough to back up.
Other Brits who don't back up their data said that they had intended to get around to it but had not been successful. Of those, 10% said it had slipped their mind, while 13% said that they were too busy with other tasks to find time to back up.
The remaining 26% of Brits throwing data preservation to the wind by not performing backups confessed that they hadn't bothered to find out how to carry out this simple task.
Of the Brits who do back up their data, 47% do so once a month, while 20% do so continuously and 17% perform a backup every 1 to 6 months.
While 39% of Brits who do actually back up their data do so to cloud storage, the most popular method, practiced by 59% of those surveyed, was to use an external hard drive.
Android users showed a marked preference for using external hard drives over cloud storage for their backups, while iPhone users were only slightly more likely to choose an external hard drive over the cloud.
"Losing personal documents, photos and videos can be a painful experience and it’s not until this happens that they realize how valuable it actually is,” said Luis Corrons, security evangelist at Avast.
“It’s important to back up data on a regular basis, keeping memories, captured in the form of photos and videos, safe and secure.”
Avast researchers recommend backing up data regularly to two locations, in effect creating a backup backup. They also advise users backing up to an external hard drive to protect that drive from ransomware attacks by disconnecting it once the backup is complete.