[eertami]

>After identifying all the links which are causing the penalty, they should create a Gmail to outreach to all of the sites to remove the links.

Just slightly curious about this, because I receive these 'link removal' emails all the time for a site I run and have never acted upon them (our comments pages are indexed by google but not linked publicly after we switched to Facebook comments). Is there any reason a website owner should act and remove the links? Surely it's not my/our problem?

[itsprofitbaron]

  Is there any reason a website owner should act and remove the links? Surely it's not my/our problem?

You should only remove links if they do not provide any value to your audience.

A website owner does not need to act and remove the links at all, you have the choice to not respond or refuse to do so. This is why Google allows people to disavow those links via the disavow tool[1] so they are no longer "counted" as providing the site with any link equity.

[1] https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main