Users registering for My Deja get access to a Deja e-mail account and the ability to post messages to newsgroup discussions and community forums. (Anyone, not just members, can submit a consumer review.) Because it can track members' movement through the site, Deja has the ability to provide advertisers with detailed information about which users visit which parts of the site, which ads they see, and which ones they actually "click through." Providing a community consisting of thousands of consumers more than willing to discuss their opinions on a wide variety of products, Deja also appeals to market researchers. But in June 1999, all of this tracking got Deja into trouble when Richard Smith - the software developer who helped the government track down the writer of the Melissa virus in April 1999 - pointed out that Deja tracked users' e-mail habits as well, logging the origin and destination of e-mails sent from Deja accounts. After Smith and others protested, CEO Tom Phillips discontinued the year-long policy, which he said had been instituted to "better understand aggregate usage patterns."

A plan to go public sometime in 1999 was put on hold indefinitely for unknown reasons; the company had filed for an initial public offering with the SEC in June of that year. With the offering delayed once again in June 2000, it seems likely that Phillips and his management team will have to refocus Deja once again. Despite the company's renewed emphasis on consumer input, many categories lack sufficient data, with five or fewer customer reviews each.