A system and method that allows a business or financial institution accepting negotiable documents such as checks as payments or receiving such documents in deposits to determine whether those documents are valid by comparing a set of document and maker characteristics extracted from an image of the document to the document and maker characteristics for valid documents stored in a profile. These characteristics are contained in a public document validation profile. The public document validation profile does not require the distribution of information subject to privacy laws and regulations and does not expose information of potential use to fraud perpetrators.