? I like buying gift cards 10-15.00 at a time instead of my credit card being "hit" all the time.
Gift
cards can be purchased from the Apple Store or any number of retailers. It's gift
certificates that are at issue.
Why don't they simply verify accounts on by one
All several million of them? And it's not the account that's at issue; it seems (from reports - Apple's never confirmed) that it was the code generation that was cracked, which if correct makes it unrelated to specific users but rather the entire gift certificate mechanism.
Anyway, no one here has a definite answer nor any solution so further discussion will be rather fruitless. You can submit your comments to Apple via their feedback page, if you wish:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html