It would be fun to find indication of intelligence out there.
But I don't think much of SETI distributing dummy projects just to keep the crowd interested.
There are many other fine projects that would benefit if SETI would restrict from this policy.
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.