What does the PFX file extension stand for PFX is commonly used as a synonym of PKCS#12 certificate stores. However, I've never seen an explanation why these stores are called PFX (on Microsoft platforms) in multiple articles, including those of Microsoft. I can think up some names for what is seemingly an acronym, but "protected file X.509" doesn't seem to work well.

Does anybody have any idea what it actually stands for?



EDIT: I did know, but I forgot.
On my Windows 7 machine the .pfx file-type is called:


  Personal Information Exchange


I'm not sure why this turned into .pfx, but guess that they wanted to avoid .pix, because it sounds like an image format.



The acronym can also be found in MSDN where it describes a set of functions in an API for creating PFX files.