There is a bug in the expansion of macros in SPF resource records. If there is no delimiter present in the string that is used for the macro expansion the expanded string is truncated by one character. This might cause a failed SPF result, or much worse it can cause a SPF success , where it should in reality be a failed result. The bug is not only in the (up to date) Debian version, but also in the upstream version. Hence I've already created a upstream issue, which you can follow here: https://github.com/shevek/libspf2/issues/42 Unfortunately the libspf2 upstream repository seems not so good maintained anymore. So it would be a good idea to include this at least in the Debian build. I've build a local backport and already made a quilt patch for this bug, which I've also attached to this issue. Kind regards Moritz