Many things are down during the recession. But there’s a boom in click fraud, the tricks used to make online ads seem more effective than they are. And companies that police the practice are seeing fresh business as Internet concerns seek to hold onto advertisers during the downturn.

The latest evidence comes from Anchor Intelligence, a Silicon Valley start-up. Ken Miller, its chief executive, says the company has received five times as many inquiries from potential customers in the past six weeks than during any previous period in its several-year history.

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Activision Blizzard (ATVI) shares are down sharply for the second straight day after CEO Bobby Kotick disclosed the sale of a large block of shares.

Kotick personally sold one million shares at an average price of $10.1834 a share; he received the shares after exercising 260,558 options with a strike price of 51.04 cents, and another 739,442 options with a strike of $1.0315. He also sold another 242,425 shares held by a trust he controls.

Two analysts bullish on the videogame publisher weighed in today to defend the stock.

Cowen’s Doug Creutz said he doesn’t believe the sales are a signal that management is concerned about near-term operating results. “On the contrary, we continue to believe current management EPS guidance is conservative,” he writes. Creutz notes that appears to be “lingering investor concern” about insider selling due to a 2002 sale of shares by Kotick prior to a downturn in ATVI’s stock price.

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Good news is hard to come by these days, so here’s a nugget about a business that’s found a silver lining in the economic clouds.

I grabbed breakfast this morning with Serguei Sofinski, CEO of Intermedia, a privately held software-as-a-service company that sells a browser-based version of Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange email that customers use for a pay-as-you-go monthly fee. Sofinski’s business isn’t immune to the economic climate–he didn’t see much growth last year, and December was rough–but he says things have been looking up in January. (Intermedia is cash-flow positive, according to Sofinski, so it doesn’t have to worry about hitting up investors for funding during the downturn. )

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Over the past few months, Americans have been hearing the word “depression” with unfamiliar and alarming regularity. The financial crisis tearing through Wall Street is routinely described as the worst since the Great Depression, and the recession into which we are sinking looks deep enough, financial commentators warn, that a few poor policy decisions could put us in a depression of our own.

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Think long term. Long, long term. In the short term, there will be pain in Silicon Valley. Start-ups will have to survive 2009. Layoffs will be in fashion: “You didn’t do a layoff? What’s wrong with you?” Venture capitalists will be hit just as hard. Their investors–the endowments, the pension funds and others–are hurting. The entire portfolio of the California Public Employees Retirement Fund, for example, a major investor in venture funds, is down 20 percent and needs to raise capital. Cash will be scarce in 2009, no matter if you’re a pension fund, a VC or a start-up. Wall Street is broken. But Wall Street has been broken for eight years now, as far as Silicon Valley is concerned.

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Silicon Valley was all a flurry late last week after reports that some respected venture capitalists woke up from their rosy daydreams to the fact that Wall Street’s meltdown is going to have a big impact on their future. Was it really necessary for these VCs to write memos, or as Sequoia Capital did, summon the CEOs of their portfolio companies to an emergency meeting at their Sand Hill Road lair? Some of the messages seemed to be no-brainers, such as “cash is king,” “lower your burn rate” and “if you are not cash-flow positive, get there now.”

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IDG News Service is reporting this afternoon that Microsoft (MSFT) has instituted a hiring freeze, apparently in response to the deteriorating economy. According to IDG, the company started notifying employees of the freeze today. The company has 91,000 employees worldwide, including 54,000 in the U.S.

I’m seeking confirmation from the company, and will update if/when they respond.

Update: Microsoft denied it has set a hiring freeze, but it is reviewing its hiring plans.

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