Recipient Portal

The recipient portal is a self-service area at badges.ninja/me where anyone who has been awarded a badge can sign in (no account required), browse every credential they've received through badges.ninja, and curate a public profile to share them.

It's a separate experience from the issuer dashboard:

Audience	URL	Auth
Issuer (someone awarding badges)	/dashboard	Real account (email + password / SSO)
Recipient (someone earning badges)	/me	Magic-link via email — no account, no password
Anyone (verifiers)	/awards/<guid>, /verify/<guid>, /u/<handle>	None — fully public

Why no password?

Recipients shouldn't have to remember another login just to look at the badges they've been given. We email them a one-time link instead.

How recipients sign in

1. Enter your email

Visit badges.ninja/me. The page shows a single email field:

Enter the email address that received the badges and click Send me a sign-in link.

We respond with a "check your inbox" message regardless of whether any awards exist for that address. This avoids leaking whether a given email has ever received a badge from any issuer on the platform.

2. Open the magic link

If awards exist for the address, you receive an email titled "Sign in to your Badges Ninja portal" with a single button:

Open my portal

The link is valid for 24 hours and only works once. If it expires before you click, just request a new one — there's no penalty.

3. You're in

Clicking the link opens badges.ninja/me?token=…. The page swaps the token for a 1-hour session token (stored only in your browser's sessionStorage, never in a cookie) and redirects you to the badge wall. The session expires when you close the tab or after one hour of activity, whichever comes first.

The badge wall

Once signed in, the portal shows:

• Your handle at the top (e.g., badges.ninja/u/jane-3a4f) — auto-suggested from your email's local-part with 4 random characters appended for uniqueness. Click Change to pick something nicer.
• A grid of every badge issued to your email through badges.ninja, newest first, grouped visually by card.
• Per-card actions:
  • Open — go to the public award page (the same one issuers/verifiers see).
  • Hide from profile / Show on profile — toggle whether this badge appears on your public profile (/u/<handle>). The award itself stays valid; you just curate what's listed publicly.

Pagination

Awards load 50 at a time. If you have more, a Load more button appears at the bottom; we paginate by stable cursor on the backend, so the order doesn't shift while you scroll.

Sign out

The Sign out button in the header clears the session token from sessionStorage. Closing the tab does the same thing automatically.

Your public profile

Once you have a handle, anyone who visits badges.ninja/u/<handle> sees a clean grid of your badges, with your display name and badge count, plus per-badge cards that open the public award page on click.

The public profile only shows badges you haven't hidden. You don't need to sign in to share your /u/<handle> URL — it's a fully public page that you own.

Choosing a handle

Handles must be 3–20 characters, only a-z 0-9 _ -. They're case-insensitive and globally unique on badges.ninja. If the handle you want is taken, you'll get a clear error and can pick something else.

You can change your handle at any time from the portal — the new one becomes the canonical URL immediately, and the old one becomes available for someone else to claim. Existing share links you've sent (/u/old-handle) won't redirect — they'll just say "Profile not found".

Removing your data (GDPR)

At the bottom of the portal there's a Remove my data from Badges Ninja link. It does the following:

1. Replaces your email on every award you've received with an opaque hash (e.g., removed:5f3a8b9c…). The award itself stays intact (the assertion JSON, badge image, blockchain proof if any) so you don't invalidate the credential — issuers still hold your badge — but you become un-discoverable: searching for your email in any portal yields no results, and your /me sign-in stops finding awards.
2. Deletes your profile row, so /u/<handle> returns 404 and the handle becomes available for someone else.

This is irreversible. You'll need a new portal session (i.e., new magic link) only if you change your mind before the cleanup completes.

What this does NOT do

• It doesn't delete the awards. The issuer who awarded you still has a record. Open Badges v2 assertions (the JSON files at /awards/<guid>) remain valid for verification purposes — that's the spec.
• If you want an issuer to actually delete an award (not just unbind your email from it), contact the issuer directly.

Frequently asked

My friend says they earned a badge but it doesn't show up

Two possibilities:

1. The issuer used a different email. Many issuers award by company email; try signing in with that one too.
2. The award is older than the recipient portal feature. We backfill emails for awards that had one set, but very old awards may have been issued without a recipient email at all (~99% of historical awards on the platform). Those can only be viewed via their direct /awards/<guid> URL.

Can I import badges from Credly / Accredible / other platforms?

Not yet. The portal currently shows only badges issued through badges.ninja. Cross-issuer aggregation (the "Open Badges Backpack" model) was a major Open Badges goal in the early 2010s, but the broader ecosystem moved to LinkedIn as the de-facto aggregator. We're not planning to compete on that surface.

Can I add a badge to my LinkedIn profile?

Yes — every public award page (/awards/<guid>) has an Add to LinkedIn profile button when the issuer has set their LinkedIn organization ID. The button uses LinkedIn's Add-to-Profile deep link, so the badge lands directly in your Certifications section without manual copy-paste.

Are my view counts visible to me?

Each award page tracks views, shares, downloads, and LinkedIn add-clicks. Issuers see these counts on their own dashboard; recipients see them on the public award page. Per Credly convention, viewer identity is never recorded — only counts.

How long does the magic link last?

24 hours. After that, request a new one — no rate limiting, no penalty.

How long does the session last?

1 hour from sign-in. Refreshing the page within that window keeps the session alive; closing the tab ends it.

Can someone else see my hidden badges?

No. Hidden badges are filtered out of the public /u/<handle> view. They're only visible to you while signed into the portal.

Can I download my badges?

Yes — open any badge from the portal, then use the Download PNG (Open Badges baked) or Download PDF certificate buttons on the public award page. Both are signed and verifiable via the Open Badges v2 spec.

What it looks like for issuers

Recipients accessing the portal don't change anything for the issuer — the awards table on the issuer's dashboard works exactly the same way. The portal is purely additive.

If you're an issuer reading this and haven't set your LinkedIn organization ID yet, do it now: Managing Issuers → LinkedIn add-to-profile. It's the single biggest "share rate" lever on the platform.

Technical details (for the curious)

For platform integrators / Open Badges nerds

• Auth model: stateless HMAC tokens. Magic-link payload is { kind: "magic", email, exp } signed with a server-side secret rotated via AWS Secrets Manager (recipient/keys:tokenSecret). On verify, we mint a { kind: "session", email, exp } token. No DB-backed session table.
• Email lookup: queries the RECIPIENT_EMAIL_LC-TIMESTAMP GSI on the awards table. Email is normalized to lowercase before storage and lookup.
• Public profile: each profile row stores EMAIL_LC so /u/<handle> can list awards without the recipient being signed in. Hidden awards are filtered server-side.
• GDPR forget: rewrites every matching award row's RECIPIENT_EMAIL_LC to removed:<random> and removes the RECIPIENT_EMAIL plaintext attribute via DynamoDB UPDATE. Profile row deleted.
• Endpoints (no Cognito; magic-link auth):
  • POST /me/auth/request { email } — emails magic link
  • POST /me/auth/verify { token } — returns session token
  • GET /me — profile + first awards page (Bearer)
  • GET /me/awards?lastEvaluatedKey=… — paginated (Bearer)
  • PUT /me/handle { handle } — set/change handle (Bearer)
  • PUT /me/awards/{guid}/visibility { hidden: bool } — toggle hidden (Bearer)
  • POST /me/auth/forget — GDPR unbind (Bearer)
  • GET /u/{handle} — public profile (no auth)