Reactions from the Church of Scientology regarding the protesters' actions have varied. In February 2008, the focus of the protest shifted to legal methods, including nonviolent protests and an attempt to get the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status in the United States.
This was followed by distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), and soon after, black faxes, prank calls, and other measures intended to disrupt the Church of Scientology's operations. The video states that Anonymous views Scientology's actions as Internet censorship, and asserts the group's intent to 'expel the church from the Internet'. The project was publicly launched in the form of a video posted to YouTube, 'Message to Scientology', on January 21, 2008. The project was started in response to the Church of Scientology's attempts to remove material from a highly publicized interview with Scientologist Tom Cruise from the Internet in January 2008. 'Chanology' is a combination of ' 4chan' and 'Scientology'. Project Chanology (also called Operation Chanology) was a protest movement against the practices of the Church of Scientology by members of Anonymous, a leaderless Internet-based group.
Around 6,000 to 8,300 real life protestors at peak
