I have outbound links pointing to penalized websites, will those links hurt my website reputation?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Lindsey Siegele: I work on a website for a popular niche magazine. We've always been very careful to use white-hate SEO tactics, and we've avoided penalties tied to algorithm changes almost completely in the past. In recent months, we've had two outside webmasters contact us, asking us to remove links to their websites because they've been penalized. We can't see anything in our content that would make it appear spammy. Should we be concerned? If so, what's our next best course of action?
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  Cristian Oana: Remove the requested links if they have an email address with the domain of the link being requested for removal.
  
  If it's legitimate then just remove it as leaving it on might cause them to use the disavow tool. This will indicate to google that someone thinks that your site is spammy.
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  Arun Mohapatra: does your traffic have dropped?
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  Greg Baka: Like the old break-up line, "It's not you, it's them" :-) ;
  Some panic stricken webmasters with sites that have been hit by Penguin are overly fearful of any links, even good ones.
  Other webmasters are better informed and are re-balancing their link profiles to escape the Penguin penalty.
  
  If it is a burden to your staff, you do not have to do anything. The webmasters can get the same end result by disavowing your links. Or if the links are important to your magazine articles, you can make them nofollow links. If the links are totally unimportant to your articles, then you can remove them. But please do read +Cristian Oana 's advice about only doing so if they email you from the website being linked to. Otherwise it could be a competitor sabotaging the site you link to.
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  Jim Munro: I would remove their links on the grounds that they are too stupid to deserve them. :)
  
  There should be no reason for you to be concerned.
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  Lindsey Siegele: +Arun Mohapatra, our traffic is steady. Thank you for your replies!
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  Ryan Cramer: I guess if their site is penalized, it may be in your best interest not to link to them, but I love what +Jim Munro ;said - "they are too stupid to deserve them."
  
  I would like to know, however, are you using a "nofollow" to link to them?  ;Considering that you haven't been penalized for linking to a penalized site, I am wondering if receiving too many "nofollow" links may be considered as thumbs down to the site.
  
  I'm just thinking... what are the reasons you would use a nofollow link. The main reason is that you don't find the link is beneficial or relative to the content of your page or is a paid ad, right? So it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that a nofollow link to your site could be scored negatively.
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  Cristian Oana: K
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  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 01:00:13 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/i_have_outbound_links_pointing_to_penalized_websites_will_those_links_hurt_my_website_reputation +Lindsey Siegele
  
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