Audience targeting vs Permissions in SharePoint

Can audience targeting be used for permissions i.e., control what the users sees? I have seen most folks get this wrong. Audience targeting cannot be used for permissions and here is the reason.
Audience target is used to target content to a particular audience but it does not prevent the user from navigating to the content.
Audience target can be used to customize the content on the page based on the audience profile but if the user knows the path to the content they can still navigate to it and view it unless it is controlled with permissions