I am a student from the UK and i believe there is no harm is assisting SETI in its exploration for life beyond this planet. I hope they do find somthing because thats hell of alot of processing power going to waste!
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.